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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN 
ELDERLY WOMAN 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

OP 

AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



" As soon as you feel too old to do a thing j 
do it.'" — Margaret Deland. 



VcKl^A.^^^?^ A^iuCC^ 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1911 






COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED * 

Published September iqit 



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CONTENTS 



I. THE SHADOW OF AGE 1 

II. MY MOTHER'S HOUSE .... 32 

III. THE CONVENTIONS OF AGE . . . .50 

IV. OTHER PEOPLE'S MEDICINE ... 74 
V. THE COMPENSATIONS OF AGE . . .99 

VI. THE SPENDING OF TIME . . . . 113 

VII. THE LAND OF OLD AGE . . . .130 

VIII. GRANDMOTHERS AND GRANDCHILDREN . 151 

IX. YOUNG PEOPLE AND OLD . . . .175 

X. UNSPOKEN WORDS 199 

XI. THE ISOLATED GENERATION . . .219 

XII. LENGTHENING SHADOWS . . .237 

XIII. GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY . . .253 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN 
ELDERLY WOMAN 

CHAPTER I 

THE SHADOW OF AGE 

As I look back over my life, it divides 
itself into four parts. First come all the 
years before I married, and as I look 
back on my childhood and my short 
girlhood, it seems to me as though I 
were remembering the life of some other 
woman, for during these many years I 
know that I have changed several times 
from one person to another, and the 
world about me has had time to change 
also. All that early part swims in a fog, 
with here and there events popping out 
of the mist, more distinct than those 
a week past, — often meaningless and 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



trivial events these; I cannot tell by 
what caprice memory has elected to 
keep them so clear. Lately I find my- 
self returning to certain opinions and 
prejudices of my girlhood, that I had 
long forgotten. Time, after all, has not 
obliterated them, nor have I walked 
away from them. It is rather as though 
I had gone in a circle, and as I come 
to the completion of it I find my old 
thoughts and opinions, changed and 
grown older, waiting for me. 

With my marriage begins the part 
of my life that seems real to me, — it 
is as if I had dreamed all that went be- 
fore. I loved the time when my chil- 
dren were little, and I have often wished 
that I could put them and myself back 
in the nursery again. I pity the women 

whose children come too late for them 

2 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



all to be in some sense children to- 
gether. But however young a mother 
is, there is a great gap between her 
and her babies. My little children were 
of a different generation from me. And 
for all our striving to understand, they 
were babies and my husband and I 
"grown people," though as I look back 
we seem mere boy and girl. 

We worried over our babies, — there 
were four of them, all in the nursery 
at the same time, — we sat up nights 
gravely discussing their "tendencies," 
and their education — only to find that 
the very tendencies over which we 
worried most they outgrew, and that 
when the time for education began in 
earnest, all the conditions had changed 
and new methods had been evolved. 

It will always be this way, — mothers 
3 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



and fathers will always sit up late nights, 
as we did, discussing the " futures " of 
their little two-year-old sons. 

We tried so hard to do right ; we 
thought back through the years and 
said : — 

"I felt this and this when I was little. 
I thought this way and this — such and 
such things frightened me. My father 
seemed unjust when he punished me 
for this offense ; my mother made such 
and such mistakes. I will not make 
these mistakes with my children." 

And so, thinking to avoid all the 
mistakes of our own parents, we made, 
all unknowing, fresh mistakes of our 
own. 

When I was little, for instance, I was 
very much afraid of the dark; so much 
so that the fears of my childhood 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



haunted my whole life, — an unlighted 
staircase has terrors for me even to 
this day. And I made up my mind that 
no child of mine should suffer from 
fear of darkness as I did. So my first 
child had a light in his room. He was 
always naughty about going to bed, 
and he grew to be a big boy before I 
found out that this was because the 
gray twilight of the room was horrible 
to him, and that he was very much 
afraid of the uncertain shapes of the 
furniture he saw in the dim light of 
the lamp, though not at all afraid of 
the dark. It is with such well-inten- 
tioned blunders that one brings up one's 
children. 

Grandmothers know that this is so, 
and for that reason all the various 
"systems" seem like foolish words to 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



them. They have learned that there 
will be mistakes made where there are 
parents and children, — yes, and that 
there will be cruelties and injustices, 
and that the only way to deal with very 
little children is to love them very 
much and let them feel this love. 

The time my children took in growing 
up seems to me phenomenally short; one 
day they were babies and the next they 
were young people to be reckoned with, 
having wills and personalities of their 
own. Other mothers tell me that their 
children grew up as quickly, but this I 
have hard work to believe. 

"When my oldest son was nearly a 
man and the others crowding on his 
heels, my dear husband died, and my son 
grew up overnight, and in the next few 
years — years that were very full ones, 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



for all their sadness — my other chil- 
dren stole a march on me and grew up 
too; almost, I might say, behind my 
back. While I was taking on myself 
thenew responsibilities of my so altered 
life, and while the world seemed yet 
very empty of companionship, I found 
that my children were becoming my 
comrades, and so 1 entered on the third 
quarter of my life. 

My boys and girls all at once be- 
longed to my generation ; we had com- 
mon interests, common tastes and 
amusements — for all practical purposes 
we were the same age. It was atthistime 
that the warning voice sounded in my 
ear, but I seemed to myself almost as 
young as my children, so no wonder I 
did n't recognize it as the voice of age 

calling to me. It is a very pleasant time 

7 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



when one is still on the great stage of 
life, playing one's small part shoulder to 
shoulder with one's children; shoulder 
to shoulder, too, with people a score of 
years one's senior. This is the golden 
moment when time holds its breath for 
a while and one imagines that, however 
old one may get, one will forever stay 
in spirit at the same smiling " middle 
way." Age, considered at that time, 
seems rather the result of some accident 
or some weakness of will than the result 
of living a great number of years in the 
world. So for many years my children 
and I did our work side by side, I help- 
ing and advising them, they aiding and 
advising me in the common partnership 
of our lives. 

The fourth part of my life, my pre- 
sent life about which I am going to 

8 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



write, began when again I became of a 
different generation from my children 
— with the difference that they now 
are the strong, I the weak ; that they 
treasure me and care for me, worry 
over me and weep over me, — a spry 
old lady, and, I am afraid, sometimes 
a defiant old lady, impatient of the rules 
which they lay down for me, as once 
they were of the rules that I made for 
them. 

How did this come about? When 
did it happen ? 

There was a time when I was more 

of a comrade than a mother to my 

daughters ; when I was the adviser of 

my sons. Now I am not. I do not know 

when the change came, nor do they, if 

indeed they realize it at all. There was 

a time when I was of their generation, 

9 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



now I am not. I cannot put my finger 
on the time when old age finally claimed 
me. But there came a moment when 
my boys were more thoughtful of me, 
when they did n't come to me any more 
with their perplexities, not because I 
had what is called " failed," but because 
they felt that the time had come when 
I ought to be " spared " every possible 
worry. So there is a conspiracy of si- 
lence against me in my household. " We 
must n't worry mother," is the watch- 
word of my dear children, and the re- 
sult of their great care is that I am on 
the outside of their lives. 

Shadows come and go among them ; 
they talk about them ; I feel the chill 
of their trouble, but I'm never told 
what it 's about. Before me they keep 

cheerful ; when I come, the shadow 

10 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



passes from their faces and they talk 
with me about all the things that they 
think will interest me. I move in a little 
artificial, smiling world away from all 
the big interests of life. If one of them 
is sick away from home, I am not told 
until it is all over ; if there is any crisis 
among them, they do all they can to 
keep me from hearing of it. But in the 
end I always do know, for no one can 
live in the shadow of any anxiety and 
not be aware of it. 

So the great silence enfolds me more 
and more. I live more alone and soli- 
tary among those I love, groping in the 
silence, watching the faces of my chil- 
dren to find what is passing in their 
lives. I often think how sweet it would 
have been if my husband had lived, and 

we could have grown old together, 

11 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



understanding and giving companion- 
ship to each other. 

I can remember the very day when 
I realized that age had claimed me at 
last. There is a great difference between 
being a thing and realizing it. A woman 
may say a hundred times that she is 
ugly ; she may be ugly ; but unless she 
realizes that she is ugly, it will make 
very little difference. It is the conscious- 
ness of our defects which undoes us, — 
and so with age. 

This great readjustment began with 

the most trivial of events. I happened 

to see a little dust on the table and 

around on the bric-a-brac — it seems to 

me that dusting is a lost art — and I 

was just wiping it off. I was enjoying 

myself, for I belong to a generation 

which was taught to work with its 

12 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



hands and to delight in doing its work 
nicely, when I heard Margaret's step 
on the stairs ; she is my youngest 
daughter, home on a visit. My first 
impulse was to sit down and pretend 
to be reading, but I resolved to bra- 
zen it out, ^r— after all, there is no rea- 
son why I shouldn't dust my own 
bric-a-brac in my own home if I 
choose. 

She came into the parlor. 

" What are you doing, darling ? " she 
said. 

" I am dusting the vases on the man- 
tel," I answered, and I tried to keep 
any note of guilt from my voice. 

"Why couldn't you have called 

Annie?" she asked me, with tender 

reproach. 

" I like to stir around myself some- 
13 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



times," I said, and for the life of me 
I could n't help being a little defiant. 

"Well, then, why couldn't you let 
me do it ? You might have called me," 
she went on in the same tone. 

"I told you I like to do it." 

"It isn't good for you to stand on 
your feet so much. Give me that dus- 
ter, mother. You'll tire yourself all 
out." 

" I get tired sitting j^ I broke out. 

"I always have said that you ought 
to take more exercise in the open air." 
By this time she had taken away my 
duster. "Why don't you go out and 
take a little walk? Come — I '11 go with 



you." 

Presently she had finished dusting, 

but I saw ever so many little places that 

I should have to wipe up later on, fur- 

14 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



lively. I should have enjoyed finishing 
that dusting myself. 

"I'll run up and get your things," 
said Margaret. 

Now, I cannot abide having any one 
trifle with my bureau drawers, and it 
is n't because I 'm old enough to have 
middle-aged sons and daughters, either. 
Ever since I can remember, I have put 
my things away myself. I keep my 
bonnets in the little drawers and my 
gloves and veils — my everyday ones, 
that is — beside them ; and I know that 
I shall never be able to find anything 
again once Margaret has been among 
them. Besides that, I do not like going 
to walk. Walking aimlessly for exer- 
cise has always seemed most futile to 
me; a feeble stroll that has no objec- 
tive point, not even the post office, an- 

15 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



noys me more than any other way of 
spending my time. I have never walked 
except when I had something to walk 
for, and I don't intend to begin at my 
time of life. 

" I don't think I '11 go to walk, dear. 
I'm going out this afternoon — " 

Now, though I said this indifferently 
enough, in a tone which didn't invite 
discussion, yet I braced myself in- 
wardly; I knew what was coming. 

" Oh, mother darling," my daughter 
cried. " You 're not going to that lec- 
ture, with your cold, in that drafty 
hall ! And you always catch more cold 
in a crowd! You won't go, will you? " 

" Well, well — "I temporized. 

" You won't go — promise." 

Then the door-bell rang, and I made 

my escape to my own room and locked 

16 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



my door after me. I knew well enough 
what would happen, — how Margaret 
would tell the others at dinner that I 
was going out, and how they would 
protest. And I made up my mind, as I 
often have before, that since I am old 
enough to know what is best for me, I 
would go to that lecture, let them talk 
as they might; so I got ready for the 
battle, resolving for the hundredth 
time that I would not be run by my 
children. 

As I sat in my room plotting — yes, 
plotting — how I should outwit my 
daughter, it came over me what a 
funny thing it was that I should be 
contriving to get , my own way, for 
all the world like a naughty, elderly 
child, while my daughter was worry- 
ing about my headstrong ways as if 

17 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



she were my mother instead of my be- 
ing hers. 

How increasingly often I hear as the 
years go on, not only from my own 
children, but from other people whose 
mothers are already old : " Mother will 
not take care of herself ! " And then 
follow fearsome stories of mother's 
latest escapade, — just as one tells how 
naughty Johnnie is getting and how 
Susie kicks her bedclothes off, — stories 
of how mother made a raid on the attic 
and cleaned it almost single-handed 
when all the family were away ; stories 
of clandestine descents into the perilous 
depths of the cellar; hair-raising tales 
of how mother was found on a step- 
ladder hanging a window curtain ; 
how mother insisted on putting down 

the preserves and pickles, — rows and 

18 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



rows and rows of shining glasses of 
them, — herself, and how tired she was 
afterwards, as if putting down the pre- 
serves tired only women who were past 
middle age. And a certain indignation 
rose within me as I remembered that 
I can visit my own attic and my own 
cellar only by stealth or with a devoted 
and tyrannical child of mine standing 
over me to see that I don't " overdo." 
For the motto of all devoted sons and 
daughters is : " Nag mother to death, 
if necessary, but don't let her overdo." 
Well, what if I should overdo ? Be- 
fore one is old, one is allowed to shorten 
one's life unchecked; one may have 
orgies of work undisturbed. And I, for 
one, would far rather shorten my life 
by overdoing than have it lengthened 

out by a series of mournful, inactive 

19 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



years. Again I said I would not be run 
by my children. And as I got to this 
point in my meditation I heard my son 
Dudley coming up the stairs. I knew 
he would come to see me, so I unlocked 
my door. 

I had said that I would not be run 
by my children. Now see to what depths 
constant nagging reduces a naturally 
straightforward woman. I know that 
Dudley watches me very closely, and I 
often wish he would sometimes ignore 
my moods as I do his; but this time I 
was ready for him, pulling a long face 
when he came in. 

He said atonce — I knew he would : — 

" You look blue, old girl." 

" I never," I burst out, " can do the 
least thing without you children inter- 
fering. I can't read all the time, you 

20 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



know; but whenever I propose to do 
anything, I meet with such opposition 
that for the sake of peace I give up at 



once." 



I spoke more warmly than I felt as 
far as this particular instance was con- 
cerned, for I was fighting for a princi- 
ple. 

" Who 's been bothering you? " Dud- 
ley demanded. 

"It isn't ^bothered' I've been," I 
remonstrated. "It's that you children 
are needlessly anxious about me. It 's 
far better for me to go out now and 
then than to sit in the house from morn- 
ing till night. And what's more," I 
added determinedly, "I am going to 
the lecture this afternoon no matter 
what Margaret or any one else says !" 
Dudley laughed. 
21 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



" There, there," he said, patting my 
hand. "You shall go; no one is going 
to oppose you. You '11 go if I have to 
take you there in a carriage myself." 

So I knew I had won the day, for 
in our family Dudley is the important 
member. But I made up my mind, just 
the same, that I would go on my own 
two feet to that lecture, for there was 
no need at all of a carriage. And I did 
go, alone and walking, though I slipped 
out of the front door so quietly that 
it was hardly dignified, — " sneaked," 
was what Margaret called it. 

As Dudley went down the hall, I 

thought how a similar warfare is being 

carried on all over this country to-day, 

wherever there are elderly mothers and 

middle-aged sons and daughters, — the 

children trying to dominate their par- 

22 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



ents with the end in view of making 
them take abnormal care of their health, 
and the older people fighting ever more 
feebly and petulantly for their lost in- 
dependence. Not only struggling to 
have their own way, not only chafing 
at the leading-strings in which their 
watchful, devoted children would keep 
them, but fighting, too, for the little 
glimmer of youth that is yet left them. 
For all this care by one's children 
means but one thing, and that is — 
age. While you slept, old age came 
upon you. You count the number of 
your years by the way your daughter 
watches your steps, and you see your 
infirmities in your son's anxious eyes; 
and the reason of all this struggle — 
why our own attics and cellars are for- 
bidden ground to us; why our daugh- 

23 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



ters take our dusters from us and ten- 
derly nag us — is that they are valiantly, 
if tactlessly, striving to delay by their 
care the hour which they know must 
come, while we try to ignore its ap- 
proach. 

We like to kill the days, which some- 
times crawl past us so slowly, with 
an illusion of activity, and we do not 
like to be reminded day by day, hour 
by hour, that we are old, that there 
is no work we need do, no " ought " 
calling us any more; that our work 
in the world is being done by other 
people and our long vacation has al- 
ready begun. 

As I sat alone that evening and so- 
berly went over the events of the day, 
I clearly realized the meaning of Mar- 
garet's taking away my duster. I real- 

24 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 

ized that there was no work in the 
world that I ought to do but take care 
of myself. I realized that I was old, 
and from that day, though I often for- 
get it, the world has looked a little dif- 
ferent to me ; my point of view has, in 
some subtle way, shifted. It was on 
that day that I sat down to think how 
it was that I had come to be old and 
what the invisible milestones were that 
I had passed along the way. 

The first time age touched me it was 
with so light a finger that I did not rec- 
ognize the touch; I didn't know what 
had happened. Indeed, the touch of age 
at first irritated me; then I laughed at 
it, and finally I became a little bewildered, 
realizing confusedly that a new ele- 
ment had come into my fife to stay. But 

I did not know that it was the shadow 

25 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



of age which was upon me, that it was 
always there, invisible, quiet, persistent, 
and, patient as death, waiting to claim 
me. 

This first touch of age comes when 
our children begin to dictate to us. 

The other day I saw the youth of a 
woman begin to wither under my very 
eyes. She did n't know what was hap- 
pening, but I knew what shadow was 
over her. To me she seems young, for I 
have seen her grow up, and though she 
has big daughters, I never thought of her 
as approaching middle age until the last 
time she and the girls came to see me. 

Edith is a big, handsome, buoyant 

woman, but there was a subdued air 

about her for which I could n't account 

until her eldest daughter said sweetly, 

but with decision : — 

26 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



" Mother is n't looking well ; she ought 
to have some sea air." 

And Edith replied with the note of 
helpless irritation that I have come to 
know so well : — 

"I have told the children so often 
that I dislike leaving my comfortable 
home in the summer." 

Then I knew why Edith seemed 
changed : her children had begun to 
run her. 

So the finger of age touches all of us 
in much the same fashion. The warn- 
ing may not always come through some 
dear child, though with mothers it is 
of tenest in that way ; but the voice of 
the valiant new generation speaks in 
one way or another to every man and 
woman, and from the moment you have 

heard that voice you have set your face 

27 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



old-agewards, though twenty years or 

more may pass before you are really 

old. The strong new generation, eager 

and clamorous, is at your heels ready 

to take your place, anxious to perform 

your tasks. Already your children are 

altering the world that you know ; 

already they are meditating the changes 

that they will make when the reins of 

power fall into their hands ; and one 

day you will wake up in a new world, 

an unhomelike place to which you must 

adjust yourself as a baby must adjust 

himself to his surroundings, but with 

the difference that every day the baby 

makes progress, whereas every day you 

will find the new conditions harder to 

understand, — as I have, and as your 

mother has. 

After my husband's death I was very 
28 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



anxious to have my own mother make 

her home with me, and at the time I 

could n't understand why she would n't. 

Now I know. She lived instead in a little 

house in the town where she had spent 

her life, and for all companionship she 

had a ^^ girl " nearly as old as herself. 

We used to worry about her a great 

deal, about her loneliness, her lack of 

care of herself, — all the things that my 

children worry about now ; but she 

met all our pleading to live with us 

with the baffling smile, and the " Well, 

well, we '11 see," that she had used with 

us when we were little children. 

One time I accompanied her home 

after a visit she had made us, in spite 

of her protests that it was ridiculous 

for me to do so. It had stormed and the 

roads were bad, and I was afraid to let 

29 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



her travel alone. She strode ahead of 
me, straight as a pine tree, up the brick 
path which led to her house, and opened 
the front door. The gesture of welcome 
she gave her lonely little home, and the 
long breath she drew, as of relief, I 
didn't then understand, though I al- 
ways remembered them. I understand 
now. She had come back to herself, to 
her own life, to her memories. Here she 
could think her own thoughts and lead 
her life as she wished. She could even 
sit in a draft without an affection- 
ately officious child following her up 
with a shawl, and her little home, lonely 
as it was, was less lonely than the strange 
world we lived in. I have often taken 
the duster from my mother's hands as 
Margaret did from mine the other morn- 
ing. And I suppose the same little 

30 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



drama will be enacted in every family 
until the end of time by mothers and 
daughters. 



CHAPTEK II 

MY mother's house 

As my years crowd upon me, I read 
the meaning of certain things in the 
past that as a young woman I never 
understood, for there is nothing more 
variable than our past. Young people 
regard the happenings of yesterday as 
a fixed quantity, but the past is just 
as insecure as the future, for all events 
have meaning and gather value only 
according to the personality they visit. 
This being so, as time changes, the tra- 
gedy of yesterday softens and smiles at 
one. The small and meaningless event, 
in the light of those which follow it, 
grows and grows until it overshadows 

all. 

32 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



The boundaries that fix life itself — 
birth and death — are perhaps the only 
events that keep their primary impor- 
tance with us as we age. Mysterious is 
the past and strange and fortuitous. It 
veils its face Hke the future. We can- 
not remember what we will ; we forget 
the very things that we have loved and 
felt and suffered. The memory of the 
emotions passes from us, and it is as 
if they had never been. Why should I 
keep this trivial memory and discard 
the other ? Who can tell me ? I know 
that this and that, when I was a girl, 
made my heart beat ; this I remember, 
but not with my emotions. Why it beat 
is now mysterious to me. 

As I grow old I find myself in a 
thousand looks and gestures of my 

mother, the memories of which come 

33 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



crowding to me out of the past. We 
go down to the grave as egotists ; so 
it is the mother of her later years 
who now returns to me as I tread over 
the path she trod. 

Especially significant is her house, — 
the little place so liberally fenced in and 
not thrown into the next place in the 
modern and odious fashion. Up the side 
of the brick path were posy beds, — for 
that is the true name for such a garden, 
— and posy beds there were in front 
of the house, and behind grew other 
flowers. These my mother tended her- 
self; the lawn was cared for by a 
gardener. This man was a great thorn 
in the side of all of us who visited her. 
He spent his days gossiping cheerily 
over the fence, telling the neighbors de- 
tails like the difference between the ther- 

34 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



mometer in the shade and in the sun. 
He would communicate to them at what 
hour he had arisen that morning and how 
his hens were laying. His cheerful and 
ceaseless babble went on whenever he 
found an ear to receive it. This old man 
annoyed us, as I said. He was a kindly 
soul, and we had no objection to him as 
an individual, but his prattle bored us, 
and we felt that he should work for the 
stipend he received for mowing the lawn 
and raking up the leaves. This feeling 
our mother did not share ; she was con- 
tented to let him dawdle through the 
hours of the day if he chose, so that 
some time or other the lawn was cut; 
and as she pottered about her flowers, 
gloves on her hands and a wide shade 
hat on her head — for she was of the 

generation whose gentlewomen were 

35 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



taught to be careful of their complex- 
ion and their hands, and thought it un- 
becoming in a delicate female to get 
blowzy with sunburn and blackened 
with tan — she would stop and talk with 
him. 

We would point out to her that she 
was encouraging him in his idle habits, 
and were always ready at a moment's 
notice to furnish her with a strong 
likely boy of eighteen in place of this 
doddering and garrulous individual. I 
can remember conversations like this : — 

"Mother, I've heard that Widow 
Johnson's boy wants to work — " 

" Widow Johnson's boy ! That weedy 
bean-pole — all legs ! " 

" He 's eighteen — " 

"I know your eighteen-year-olds," 

my mother would cry. " They stop work- 

36 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



ing the moment your back is turned. 
I like my man ; I can depend on 
him." 

"Yes," we would reply bitterly, " you 
can depend on him to do nothing. Be- 
sides, you '11 be helping the boy's mo- 
ther." 

"We knew that a practice of my 
mother's was to help along solitary 
women less fortunately placed than she 
had been. 

But to this suggestion she would re- 
ply with a masterful definiteness : — 

" I 'm not an eleemosynary institution, 
my dear." 

There was no arguing with her; 

there was no making her see that that 

was precisely what she was. There 

was no use offering her men in the 

prime of life to mow her lawn any 

37 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



more than there was m offering her 
what she called " tittering and hooting 
boys." 

She was just as bad about the bits 
of carpentry that there were to be done 
around the house. There was a cer- 
tain workman who came occasionally 
on odd jobs and whom we tried to have 
her get rid of, but for whom, after all, 
we had a sneaking fondness. 

I can remember this old man well. 

He seemed no thicker than a piece of 

paper and gave the impression of some 

odd ghost, so bent-over was he, so pale, 

— a strange, tanned pallor, framed in 

by tenuous hair and sparse, white 

whiskers. He moved brokenly and 

feebly, and yet clung with the tenacity 

of a fly to the side of a roof. He liked 

shingling, he said ; it kept him young. 

38 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



This I doubt, nor have I ever yet tried 
it for the disease of age. 

My mother claimed he was a good 
carpenter. That may have been ; at any 
rate, all the carpentering that was done, 
was done by him, from shingling to pot- 
tering over a broken piazza rail. What 
especially irritated us about him was 
that his memory had departed from him. 
It was impossible for him to remember 
for ten consecutive minutes where to 
find his tools. One could find him at any 
unexpected place, always, he said, look- 
ing for the nails or the screwdriver or 
the hammer. He strewed them about 
him with as lavish a gesture as Millet's 
Sower, so one might judge from the 
length of time he spent looking for 
them. He would wander from room to 

room, peering with nearsighted eyes 

39 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



into every corner ; and sometimes he 
would forget which tool it was he had 
lost, and would have to go back to find 
out, and then begin the search all over 
again. He never became impatient at 
this, but continued his long wanderings 
like some little New England " Wander- 
ing Jew, " in sorrow over the unnatural 
perversity of his tools rather than in 
any anger against them. 

A third person my mother employed 
of this same kind ; this one a painter. 
He was elderly also ; garrulous, but in 
a different way from the childlike prat- 
tle of the gardener. 

No, he couldn't tell how much a 

thing would cost. Perhaps it would cost 

so much, and perhaps so much; he 

could n't tell until he got through. No, 

he could n't tell you how long it would 

40 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



take him, — perhaps a day, perhaps 
longer; — he didn't know. "When would 
he come? He didn't know; maybe 
to-morrow, — maybe next day, — he 
could n't tell. 

"But," my mother would persist, 
" we Ve got to have that kitchen floor 
painted and we 've got to know when 
you 're coming, Mr. Bunner." 

" Well, now. Mis' Paine, I can't tell 
you. Now, I '11 tell you how it is; I 'm 
waitin' now for some paint to paint 
Malcolm's house, an' when I get that 
paint, I '11 paint his house, an' when I 
get that done, I '11 do your kitchen." 

"But while you're waiting," my 
mother would urge. 

And you can imagine us fairly tramp- 
ing up and down with rage, wishing to 

poke forth from the doors the old piker. 

41 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



Aud thus it would go on, and after 
spending more or less of kindliness on 
him, my mother would at last persuade 
the old man to come the next day. 

As I look back on it, it seems as if 
always one or the other of these feck- 
less elderly workmen was engaged in 
doing some odd job or other around my 
mother's place, and I think this was very 
likely true. I know now why she did it; 
it gave her that feeling with which we 
older people like to deceive ourselves, 
— and succeed according to the clear- 
ness of our mental capacity, — the illu- 
sion of activity, of really accomplishing 
something ; and my mother accomplished 
this : that she kept up her house spick 
and span to her last moment. I know 
now, too, why she had these elderly 

people about her, and why she couldn't 

42 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



abide the smart, modern methods of 
younger and more efficient people. 
IN'ot only had they worked for her for 
years and she had a loyalty towards her 
own generation, but I think she had 
some deeper sympathy and liking for 
their failing powers. Possibly she saw 
her own mirrored in theirs ; perhaps she 
remembered when the old carpenter 
was as spry as a kitten and when he 
never so much as mislaid a hook-eye. 

They were old and she was old, but 
they were older than she, and I think 
that the contrast between them gave 
her a sense of youthful power. I have 
seen an aged mother be almost a foun- 
tain of youth. There lives here an old 
woman who is upwards of ninety, and 
with her live her unmarried daughters, 

— women well along in their sixties. 

43 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



The old lady still calls her daughters 

"the girls," and orders them about 

smartly. They are all of the old school 

and they obey her very well, but in turn 

they tyrannize over her, look after her; 

" do for her," as we have it here. One 

can never drop in on them without 

their having a story to tell about some 

new rash deed of " mother's "; and so 

they are young in spirit, having a work 

to do in the world; some one to run, 

and no chit of a younger generation to 

run them. Another reason for their 

youthfulness is that the house has not 

had so much as a new matchsafe for 

twenty years : they yet have about them 

things all of their own choosing; they 

have not had to part with the familiar 

friends of their youth. 

My mother's house was like this. 
44 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



While she was particular about repairs, 
new things she would not buy. With- 
in -doors, combined with an austere 
order, there was a certain dilapidation 
of armchairs due to over-use; the lamp 
was old ; everything about her had been 
used for years, and the presents which 
we made her stuck out like so many 
sore thumbs, — I am sure that many 
of them disappeared into cupboards 
and drawers when we took our depar- 
ture. 

And when we broke up our larger 
house in which we lived, and she and 
father came to live in this little one, 
I remember she gave us with lavish 
hand what seemed to us the pick of the 
furniture, and kept for herself those 
things that belonged to her earlier 

years. 

45 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 



Have you ever noticed when it is 
that people have their houses " done 
over " ? I have. It usually occurs soon 
after the daughters have been "out" 
a while, and have had time to develop 
a taste of their own. Then the moment 
comes when the furniture is rearranged, 
new touches are added, old-fashioned 
things sent away to the attic for a long 
rest, and the house passes from the 
older generation to the younger. The 
altered aspect of the house shows that 
the young people are beginning to take 
possession of their own. Do you re- 
member when so many of the parlor 
carpets throughout the land were done 
away with and little slippery rugs put 
in their places? — and a wonder it is 
that we did n't all break our necks slid- 
ing across the floor on them ! 

46 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN" 



I have an old friend who picks her 
way gingerly across the shining, pol- 
ished floor, as much in fear for her poor 
stiff bones as if she were walking on 
ice. As she walks carefully from one 
treacherous oasis of a rug to another 
and deposits herself on a Chippendale 
chair, I can but remember the time 
when the room was full of billowy, 
upholstered chairs, faulty in hne, per- 
haps, but holding out ample, inviting 
arms to you. And as she perches her- 
self on the uncompromising colonial 
furniture, I know that she regrets her 
comfortable old chairs, though she 
bravely pretends she thinks the new 
furniture a great improvement. 

Here is another of the milestones of 

age; we pretend as hard as we can that 

we like many things we don't like, that 

47 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



we may not seem old-fashioned to our 
dear ones. We do what we can to keep 
pace with them until our old legs are 
weary with running; but our children, 
do the best we may, are far in advance 
of us. We make concession after con- 
cession of our own preferences, even 
to giving up the things that lived with 
us when we were young and which 
grew old with us and old-fashioned 
even as we did. To please our children 
we treacherously discard them, pre- 
tending we think them, in their old- 
fashioned comfort, as hideous as do 
our young people. My friend points 
out the purity of design of the new 
furniture, — but she has had one of the 
old parlor chairs done over and put in 
her own bedroom. She sits there a good 

deal. I have noticed that older women 

48 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



work and read much in their own 
rooms, and I sometimes wonder if it 
is n't because the rest of the house has 
become strange and unhomelike. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CONVENTIONS OF AGE 

I CAN remember when I was a young 
woman how many of my mother's foi- 
bles fretted me, for I was like the rest. 
I had n't reasoned it out any more than 
most people do, but I held some immu- 
table opinions about the conduct of age. 
If I had my life to live over again, I 
should know better. I should cherish 
each of my mother's restless days, be- 
cause I would know that her very rest- 
lessness and occasional discontent were 
the signs that life was keen within her, 
and that I myself had made her rest- 
less, because as a too zealous daughter 
I had in a measure, together with Time, 

taken from her some of the occupations 

50 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



that still by right belonged to her. I 
would let her have her way on all the 
minor points of dress and occupation. 
I would not criticize the old workmen 
she chose ; and, above all, I would not 
try to impose on her any of my ideas 
of how an older woman should act. 
For young people have hard-and-fast 
notions concerning older women's ac- 
tions. When we depart from them, 
they make a personal grievance of it. 

I do not think I am exaggerating 
when I say that there is no class of 
society so bound down by convention, 
and for no good reason, as are the old- 
est of all. A young and pretty woman 
must, of course, walk carefully along 
life's paths; she must take care to 
avoid even the appearance of evil. As 

she grows older, a suitable amount of 

51 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 



convention in the mother of a family is 
a wholesome balance. But when a wo- 
man grows old, when she has climbed 
the ladder of years beyond the point 
where scandal could touch her, one 
would thmk that she might lay aside 
minor conventions of life ; that at last 
she might do what she pleased, only 
limited by her own failing strength. 
There are so few things, after all, left 
for us to do, so few that we have the 
heart left for, or the wish for now, that 
it would seem only right that we should 
follow our caprice in the small matters 
that still belong to us. 

I recently heard a young woman my 
daughter's age complain somewhat af- 
ter this fashion : — 

" There are no more real grandmo- 
thers left in the world ! I don't know 

52 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



what the nowadays children are going to 
do. How much my dear old grandmo- 
ther meant to me ! As far back as lean re- 
member, her sweet white head, crowned 
with its snow-white cap, was always at 
her favorite window in summer, and 
in winter she sat beside the open fire 
with her feet upon a little hassock, like 
Whistler's mother. We children always 
knew where to find grandma. She was 
always so glad when we came. I can 
see yet the welcome in her eyes when 
we would run in on her. She would in- 
vent little games for us and tell us lit- 
tle stories as long as we would stay. 
The lovely part of it was that she was 
always tliere, No matter if mother was 
out, or any one else, we could be sure 
of finding grandma ready to hear all 

about our little joys and troubles." 

53 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



During this little recital, which, of 
course, was not a long peroration, but 
was given to us in the broken phrases 
of a conversation, I had a very vivid pic- 
ture of this old lady, probably only a 
few years older than myself, who was 
" always there." What infirmity, I won- 
dered, made her be there all the time? 
"When an older woman is "always 
there," depend upon it, there is some 
deeper reason and a sadder one than that 
she was waiting for her little grand- 
children. No one knows this better than 
I myself, for I, too, am "there," for 
one reason or another, more than I 
wish to be. Oh, I knew very well how 
eagerly she waited for those little grand- 
children of hers, and how the lonely, 
gray, spacious hours brightened up in 
the flicker of their laughter. I knew, 

54 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



too, as they got over being little babies, 
how brief their sweet, tumultuous visits 
must have been. It is only very little 
children who spend much time in their 
grandmother's skirts. For a long time 
past I have been conscious that Betty 
only stays with me when she is kept in 
or has nothing better to do. Once a 
child has grown into liberty, you may 
be sure it will not spend overlong 
spaces of time with its grandparents, 
unless they, too, are active enough to 
be in the field, like an old English 
friend of mine who, at seventy-three, 
with undimmed enthusiasm, is teaching 
his grandchildren to ride and shoot and 
whip a trout stream. You may depend 
upon it that they idolize him, not because 
he is " there " all the time, but because 
he can do all these things better than 

55 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



they can, and is, besides, a living spring 
of fishing-tackle, rods, and other sport- 
ing goods. 

But this was not all my friend had to 
say. After her picture of her own poor 
grandmother, she took up the first part 
of her argument. 

" I^owadays," said she, "Hook around 
in vain for sweet old ladies like my 
grandmother. There do not seem to he 
any old ladies any more ; they seem to 
have gone out of fashion along with 
the dear, pretty caps they used to wear, 
and that they looked so sweet in. Now- 
adays older women dress just like their 
daughters. Instead of ever being where 
their grandchildren can find them, they 
are off, if you please, at clubs or play- 
ing cards or even taking a jaunt in a 

motor-car ! " 

56 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



She said this, mind you, under my 
very nose, and I did n't know whether 
I was vaguely pleased with the subtle 
flattery that she ignored the fact that I 
was a very case in point of her recal- 
citrant new-fangled grandmother, or 
whether to feel a little vexed with her 
for being so obtuse. For a moment I 
entertained the idea of allowing myself 
the luxury of playing at being her age, 
and then I felt I had better come out 
flat-footed, and say, " Well, Eleanor, I 
suppose you think I had better wear a 
cap and give up the whist club " ; but 
I knew she would answer, with a look 
of naive wonder in her soft brown eyes, 
" Why, auntie, you Ve not old ! " So all 
I said was, " I suppose, my dear, the 
conditions of life are easier and the 

doctors are better, so nowadays many 

57 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



older people manage to keep their in- 
firmities at bay a little longer." 

I think that back of Eleanor's ideal 
of a grandmother there lay a good deal 
or unconscious selfishness. An elderly 
mother who sits contentedly by the fire 
all day is a far smaller responsibility 
than a mother that one can never put a 
hand on, and who, at a moment's notice, 
goes off on perilous expeditions. 

Everything Eleanor had said about 

her grandmother had ruffled me more 

than it should, so after I got over my 

impatience, I asked myself why I had 

been so annoyed, after all. I found the 

answer soon enough. In lamenting that 

there were no grandmothers left like 

hers, Eleanor had clearly defined the 

position that the average person takes 

toward older women. 

58 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



Each generation permits a different 
type of young girl, but the older wo- 
man must not change; her outline is 
fixed and immovable. She must be like 
Eleanor's grandmother, " always there," 
— waiting, waiting, with a smiling face 
through the long, quiet, empty hours, 
for her grandchildren to come home. 

I read a clever poem the other day, 
the refrain of which was, " I 'm looking 
forward to old age." 

" Then," said the young writer, " at 
last I can be perfectly comfortable. I 
can lay aside the minor conventions 
along with my tight shoes and tight 
corsets. I can at last do as I please. 
I 'm looking forward to old age." 

When this young woman arrives at 

the Land of Old Age, though, indeed, 

she may, it is true, lay aside shoes that 

59 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



are too small and clothes that are too 
tight, she will, on the other hand, find 
a whole new set of rules and regulations 
to live by, and regulations that are not 
self-imposed, but imposed by custom 
and enforced by the younger genera- 
tion. There she will find waiting for 
her an ideal of what she should be her- 
self, — the ideal which was attained by 
Eleanor's poor grandmother; a grace- 
ful, shadowy person, sitting, her feet 
on a hassock, like Whistler's mother; 
some one who has none of the impulses 
of youth, which, in a grandmother, the 
younger generation finds so disconcert- 
ino:. Even the costume of this ideal is 
decided upon by our exacting young 
people. She shall wear, our ideal grand- 
mother, soft black or gray draperies, a 

piece of beautiful old lace at her neck, 

60 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



or a white fichu of rare old-fashioned 
workmanship crossed on her bosom. 
Caps are no longer the fashion, — but 
our custom-ridden children regret them. 

For myself, should I live to be ninety, 
I hope I shall fall short of this ideal in 
all respects. I do not wish to become a 
mere ornamental nonentity about whom 
people shall say, " What a sweet old 
lady ! " I hope that I shall keep my 
family alert over my misdeeds until my 
end, for then I shall be sure that I shall 
not have slipped altogether among the 
shadows before I go. 

Think what the ideal of old age that 

seems so beautiful implies ; it means that 

the body has so lost its resiliency that 

the wholesome desire for action has 

passed, that one's own life and actions 

have ceased to have an interest for one, 

61 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



and that instead of having to snatch time 

to play with one's grandchildren, one 

has nothing to do but wait, — nothing in 

the world to do but " be there." It is too 

great a price to pay for conforming to 

an ideal whose greatest value, after all, 

lies in a certain picturesqueness. I do 

not think, either, that any middle-aged 

woman would consciously choose to 

have her own mother one of these ideal 

grandmothers, although there are ways 

in which each one of our daughters 

would be glad to have us conform to an 

ideal of elderly conduct a little more 

closely. 

There are daughters who, like my 

own, limit the field of their mothers' 

activities, believing firmly that they are 

doing so in the interest of their mothers' 

health. There are a great many other 

62 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



middle-aged women whom I see about 
me who constantly curtail their mothers' 
personal liberties, because these old 
ladies wish to do things which, if you 
please, shock the fastidious daughters 
in what they think is fitting for the 
aged. These young women know so 
definitely what an older woman may 
and may not say and do and wear ! 

" Mediaeval " is a word I hear often 
nowadays on the lips of the young peo- 
ple. So-and-So has "mediaeval" ideas 
on the subject of divorce or what-not. 
All older people are supposed to hold 
"mediaeval" ideas, and when it turns 
out that one of us happens to have read 
and digested a new economic theory or 
some new book of vital interest, it is al- 
ways an irritating moment to me when 

a younger woman remarks, in a patron- 

63 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



izing way, " Why, how Mrs. So-and-So 
keeps up with the times ! " But there 
is no reactionary older woman I know 
who holds as " mediaeval " opinions as 
those which the ordinary younger women 
have about the older generation. The 
broadest-minded women I know are as 
tradition - bound as possible when it 
comes to what we older women may do. 
Many an older woman, for instance, 
finds a style which especially suits her, 
— a style which does not conform to 
the costume in which the poetical im- 
agination pictures the dwellers in the 
Land of Old Age. I had an old friend 
who happened to fancy, as accessories 
to a costume in which to pass her de- 
clining years, a bustle and a certain 
false front. Bustles went their way, 

and a few people still clung to them; 

64 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 

then even the faithful gave them up, 
but my friend still wore hers vaHantly. 
It suited her so to do, — and why not? 
Had n't she followed the fashions long 
enough? Hadn't she earned her right 
to wear what she chose? That was the 
way she looked at it. She was a valiant, 
high-spirited old lady, full of good- 
tempered anecdotes about every one 
you ever heard of, fond of all the 
bright things of life, — young people, 
dance music, company, and bright 
colors; the last she wore unflinchingly. 
So gayly indeed and gladly did she 
walk up the road of time that she died, 
advanced in years, without old age hav- 
ing seemingly laid a finger on her blithe 
spirit. If the young people had a quiet 
smile at the expense of her bustle, it 

was a tender one. The false front which 

65 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



she wore with great artlessness was an 
ornament to her personality. None who 
loved her, and they were many, would 
have had her altered in any respect. 
There was but one exception to this — 
her widowed daughter, who with her 
little girls made her home with her 
mother. The bustle and false front 
caused her the keenest pain. I do not 
believe my friend ever got herself ready 
for a " party " without the daughter try- 
ing to decrease the size of that bustle. 
She never gave up trying. I remember 
waiting for my friend and hearing in 
the hall above me the sounds of argu- 
ment, and at last from the stairs my 
friend's voice : " For the hundredth 
time, Emily, I will not go out looking 
like a pancake ! I tell you I should n't 
feel decent ! " 

66 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



She came into the room, her flowing 
silk rustling and creaking, her bonnet 
brave with colors, and I couldn't, as 
I looked at her, understand how any 
daughter, however hide-bound, could 
have wished to alter a hem's breadth of 
her high-hearted, courageous costume. 
My friend loved every one to be happy 
and contented around her, and I often 
think how many small annoyances she 
might have been spared had her daugh- 
ter not had such firm convictions con- 
cerning the conventional dress of age. 
I am glad to relate, however, that my 
old friend wore her bustle, her daugh- 
ter notwithstanding, almost to her dying 
day. I hope they buried it with her, — 
she made a brave fight for it. She is to 
me an inspiring memory. When my 

children try— oh, very gently— to take 

67 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



from me some little habit or some pe- 
culiarity of dress, I think of her and 
smilingly hold on to my own, for I will 
not encourage them in their stupid 
and " mediaeval " idea of the fitness 
of things. I will not, at my time of 
life, have my individuality pruned and 
clipped. In the matter of dress there 
are endless limitations for us older peo- 
ple. All the lighter colors are supposed 
to be unsuitable for us ; and so for some 
of us they are from an aesthetic point 
of view, though I have known many a 
middle-aged woman and many a pink- 
cheeked, snowy-haired grandmother to 
whom pale pink would have been every 
bit as becoming as the pale lavender 
which custom permits. 

I know one sweet old lady who has 

always loved pink as a favorite color. 

68 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



She confessed to me that it was a cross 
to her when she grew too old to wear it. 

"Well, why don't you anyway?" I 
asked her, knowing very well why. / 
would not have the courage to blossom 
out in so much as one daring pink rib- 
bon, but, " Why don't you ? " said I. 

" I do," she replied mysteriously, " I 
do." 

I looked at her simple black gown. 

" Oh, not on the outside ! But," said 
she, lowering her voice, " I always run 
in plenty of pink ribbon in my things, 
and I have pink ribbon garters ! " she 
concluded triumphantly. 

And only an older woman who has 

been cut off by an arbitrary custom 

from many of the pretty gay things of 

life will understand what a comfort 

those pink ribbon garters were to her. 

69 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



One of my friends has already reached 
the age of eighty without her interest 
in Hf e being in any degree abated, and, 
what is far rarer, without her desire to 
be up and doing being in any degree 
diminished by age's infirmities. She has, 
perhaps, a more transparent look than 
she had some fifteen years ago, but she 
is still as erect as a girl. Except for 
looks, for her beautiful white hair and 
her old-lady dresses, — she happens to 
be one who takes kindly to the wearing 
of lace fichus, — she is everything that 
conventionally an older woman should 
not be. You do not find her " there," 
— not she; and not only is she not there, 
but she does n't tell her daughters where 
she is going. They are between Mar- 
garet's age and mine, and discuss 

"Mother's" wild, headstrong ways in 

70 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



my presence. She gives them a great 
deal of trouble and anxiety, and it is n't 
all by any means simple worry for fear 
she may do herself some harm or over- 
tax her strength. She keeps a life of her 
own. Since her daughters have in the 
natural order of things assumed the 
helm, she has interested herself in vari- 
ous intellectual pursuits; she attends 
lectures not only here, but in the sur- 
rounding towns. She is valiant in the 
field of missionary labor. As her daugh- 
ter sighs : " It seems to me we never 
send out cards for anything that mother 
does n't take that time for getting up 
barrels for the Indians ! " You see, her 
activities interfere with the family, and 
they will neither let her go her way 
unmolested nor will they accept her 

activity without protest. She is, and 

71 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



partly because of these arbitrary con- 
ventionalities, a great care to her daugh- 
ters. 

One of them came in the other day 
sighing : — 

"Well, I've got to go with mother 
to Elenwood to hear that man lecture 
on ' Labor Conditions ' to-day. I donH 
see where I 'm to find time." 

"Your mother couldn't go alone, I 
suppose? " I asked tentatively. 

" She could," replied this poor daugh- 
ter, "for she's to meet friends at the 
other end, but it looJcs so bad for a wo- 
man of mother's age to go around the 
country alone. As if her children cared 
nothing for her ! " 

It would be a great relief to them all 
if this active old lady would stay at 

home more. I am glad she does n't. My 

72 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



high-spirited friend is one of those who 
are helping to kill out the conventions 
which are troublesome weeds in the 
Land of Old Age. 



CHAPTER IV 

OTHER people's MEDICINE 

Akother convention that shackles the 
lives of most older women is the methods 
vrhich their grown children employ to 
conserve their elders' health. Each fam- 
ily has its own particular fetish as to 
what " Mother " ought to do for her 
health ; almost all older women who have 
their children living with them have to 
submit themselves to the hygienic fads 
of their sons and daughters. In my own 
case it is carriages ; they are the bane 
of my life. I could keep an accurate re- 
cord of how years are crowding on me 
by the way my children send me around 
instead of letting me walk. When Mar- 
garet begins, " Colds are terribly preva- 

74 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



lent at this time of year. Have you 
heard, Dudley, that Mrs. Sears has got 
pneumonia ? " — then I know that she 
wants me to drive to the reception or 
wherever I am going. 

To any one who has not passed from 
middle age into the place where people 
live who are already counted old, it 
may seem a far cry between Mrs. Sears's 
pneumonia and my having a carriage 
on a sunny fall day, but those who are 
living in that country where older peo- 
ple dwell will understand. To listen to 
our children talk to us, you might think 
that all we older people might live a 
thousand years if we only did all the 
tiresome, unpleasant things for our 
health that our children want us to do, 
and I suppose that I ought to be glad 

that my Margaret has a mania for car- 

75 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



riages. That is the word for it, — a 
mania. At the slightest excuse I am 
driven in a jolting, germ-laden, livery- 
stable hack to and from the reception, 
concert, or lecture or church. This 
procedure has saved me, according to 
Margaret, all the diseases and ailments 
of mankind except perhaps the bubonic 
plague, and if that disease were preva- 
lent in our neighborhood, I dare say 
Margaret would find means of proving 
a carriage had saved me that. 

Still, there are friends of mine whose 
daughters have so much more unplea- 
sant ways of preserving their mothers' 
lives, that I should be glad that it is 
nothing worse than hacks. 

My friend, Mrs. Wellington, for in- 
stance, is taken out and walked and 

walked about until she almost drops, 

76 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



because her children believe that people 
get old and stiff because they don't 
walk enough. As if it was n't because 
they are stiff in their joints that makes 
them want to keep quiet ! 

Mrs. Granger is dreadfully afraid she 
will have to give up breakfast, which is 
a meal she has always especially enjoyed, 
just to keep peace. Every little turn of 
any kind that she has, her children put 
down to her liking for griddle - cakes 
and syrup in the morning, since they 
have gone in for the no-breakfast fad. 
She says that every time she eats a good 
comfortable breakfast, the family sit 
around with faces as long as her arm, 
and she is just on the point of giving 
in, although she knows it will be bad 
for her. 

Mothers cannot bear to see their 

77 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 



children worried and distressed, and it 
is here that we are as much at our 
children's mercy as we were when they 
were little things at our knee and could 
always get around us with tears well- 
ing to the eyes and quivering upper 
lip. 

When Margaret spoke last about a 
carriage, she had a little worried ex- 
pression on her brow that was so like 
Margaret when she was two years old 
that I would go to church in a hay- 
wagon to please her. I never could 
bear to see that little puzzled, distressed 
look on her face. So I submitted with 
fairly good grace to the proposition 
that I should go to Mrs. Carter's recep- 
tion in the hack. I made a little protest, 
however, because, unless I did that, I 

should soon lose the use of my legs 

78 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



altogether and perhaps degenerate into 
a person who has to be pushed around 
in a wheel chair before I am much older. 
I said : — 

" Well, Margaret, I will go to - day 
just to please you, but the next time 
I am going to use my own judgment 
about it. I have been going in a car- 
riage all summer to avoid sunstroke 
and apoplexy, and now that fall has 
come, I must avoid pneumonia and ton- 
sillitis, and in the winter I shall be avoid- 
ing slipping on the ice ; but there 's got 
to be some cranny in the year when I 
can go to places on my own two feet." 

But while I will submit to carriages, 

I will not submit to everything, and I 

draw the line at a trained nurse every 

time I am a little ill. Recently I sent 

one of them flying, and while I might 

79 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



have made the scene easier for every 
one, still it did me good to get rid of 
that woman in the summary way I did, 
— or, rather, made Margaret do; for 
this was one of the occasions when I 
shirked and took advantage of one of 
the privileges age gives us. Indeed, I 
went so far as to tell Margaret that 
the trained nurse or I would leave the 
house. 

Of course, when I am really ill and 
prostrate, and have to be watched at 
night, then I am willing to have all the 
discomforts — to say nothing of the 
needless expense — of having such a 
woman about. But when I am well, or 
pretty nearly well, to have a capped 
and aproned and uniformed woman, 
with a strong, dominant will, following 

my every footstep and bringing me un- 

80 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



palatable things to eat every two hours, 
— why then, I shall always rebel, as I 
have done this time. 

I said to Margaret : " This illness 
has been a trying one to me in every 
respect. I have never had to keep in 
my bed any longer than a morning at 
a time since you were born. I have 
lain in bed now six days ; three of 
these days I might as well have been 
up." 

At which Margaret replied : " I am 
sure you are better for the rest, dar- 
ling." 

I know I 'm not. The reason I know 
this is that the last three days, when- 
ever the nurse and Margaret left me 
alone to go down and get some un- 
pleasant eatable from the kitchen for 

me, I got up and sat in my rocker at 

81 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



the window, which rested my back, 
though I hated to hurry back to bed, 
as of course I had to do whenever I 
heard them coming. So I might just 
as well, as you can see for yourself, 
have been up and dressed all the time, 
without having the nervous strain of 
listening for their return. 

Then, too, the first day I was ill, I 
dressed and went downstairs. Every- 
body made a great outcry, and they 
sent for the doctor again, for the sole 
purpose of making' me do as they said. 
He is a very sensible young man, and 
I approve of a great many of his ideas, 
but at the same time, like most of the 
modern school, he carries much too far 
the modern theory of keeping a person 
in bed until his muscles grow weak 

and his back aches, though, of course, 

82 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



he is not nearly so unreasonable about 
this as my own children. 

" I 'd like to ask you a simple ques- 
tion, Doctor/' I said to him when he 
told me that, as long as my tempera- 
ture was above normal, I would have 
to stay in bed. " How do all the work- 
ingmen do — all the people with livings 
to earn — when their temperatures go 
to 102?" 

He pretended, when they have a 
fever, that even workingmen have to 
stay at home first or last; but I don't 
believe it. When people have to earn 
a living, nothing will convince me that 
they pop thermometers down their 
throats every time their stomachs get 
upset. 

What neither the doctor nor my chil- 
dren understand is that I know more 

83 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



about matters concerning my own 
health than any one else. During my 
long life I have, of course, had my ups 
and downs of health like other people, 
and with the advancing of years, espe- 
cially the last three, my strength and 
endurance have lessened perceptibly, 
and I, like other middle-aged people, 
have had to give myself care, so I have 
learned pretty well what things to avoid 
and how to treat my own idiosyncra- 
sies. 

During this illness, how I longed for 
some of those old, easy-going days, 
when, even though I did n't feel well, 
I managed to get downstairs and sit 
quietly around with my book or even 
have a whiff of fresh air; and how I 
longed for the days when I lay down 

or sat up as I felt inclined, instead 

84 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



of lying rigid and aching in my bed, 
watched like a cat by a strange woman 
from morning till night and from night 
till morning. How I disliked that cot 
put up in my bedroom for her to sleep 
in! 

And this was not the worst of it. It 
seemed to me as if that woman deliber- 
ately hid all my things. One would think, 
for instance, that, having made a pain- 
ful attempt to do my hair, — and she 
almost pulled out the few remaining 
strands that are left me, and with which 
I am naturally unwilling to part, — it 
would have occurred to her to replace 
the brush and comb and other articles 
where she found them. WhenI sHpped 
out of my bed to do my own hair in a 
comfortable way, I could find nothing 
whatever to do it with; all my toilet 

85 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



articles, which ordinarily I could have 
put my hand on in the dark, had disap- 
peared. I looked all over the room for 
them; they had vanished utterly as if 
she had swallowed them. I wandered 
up and down, trying to find them, and, 
I will confess, so vexed that I had n't 
any ears for Margaret's approach. 
"When she came into the room and 
found me up, she exasperated me still 
more by saying, "Why, darling, how 
did you happen to be up? Why didn't 
you let the trained nurse get whatever 
you wanted? " 

" Margaret," I said, " keep that wo- 
man out of here for fifteen minutes, 
because I don't want to say anything 
that I shall be sorry for later. I sup- 
pose she does what she conceives to be 

her duty, but a more disorderly and ill- 

86 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



trained woman it has n't been my lot to 
meet. Where 's my toothbrush? Where 
are my brush and comb? What has she 
done with my licorice tablets? And I 
can tell you frankly that if she has 
touched my pen and paper, — even 
though I don't want them now, — I 
shall have to tell her what I think of 
her. Be so kind as to find my brush and 
comb so that I can do my hair with 
some comfort. Trained nurses ought to 
be taught not to do one's hair up in 
wads and make them feel like English 
walnuts to lie on ! " 

I don't pretend that this was a gra- 
cious speech, and it is not the way that 
I usually feel or talk to any one, espe- 
cially to my daughter. I merely quote 
myself to show to what a state of exas- 
peration a woman of my age and train- 

87 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



ing may be driven. That woman was 
there to take care of my health; the 
reason I suffered her about me at all 
was to save my family anxiety. But it 
is extremely trying for a woman of 
my years, except in cases of the most 
dire necessity, to have fussing about 
her person an outsider who upsets all 
her little personal ways ; meddles with 
her personal belongings, and renders 
her far more uncomfortable than com- 
fortable. I am sure that my tempera- 
ture remained above normal partly 
through the continual irritation that I 
suffered because of these things. 

Then, too, I know it was not good 
for me to have to watch every chance 
to slip out of bed to brush my own 
teeth. Brushing my teeth in bed, or, 

worse still, allowing some one else to 

88 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



brush them for me, is a thing which I 
should have to be far sicker than I have 
ever been to have happen to me. When 
I give up getting out of bed to brush my 
teeth of my ovrn accord, then my chil- 
dren may know I 'm really ill, and can 
send, if they like, for a day nurse and 
a night nurse, for I shall be past caring 
how many troublesome and disorderly 
women I have about me. 

Three times in one night she got up 
to ask me if I spoke, or if I wanted any- 
thing, just because I cleared my throat 
as it 's my habit to do. Finally I said 
to her : " Miss Jenkins, if you came to 
my bedside less often, my chances of 
going to sleep would, I think, be greater, 
and I 'm sure it is better for your health 
as well as mine for you to remain in 

your own bed." 

89 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



All of which shows under what a ner- 
vous pressure I have been forced to 
live. I explained my point of view to 
Margaret after the departure of the 
nurse. I said to my daughter : " Mar- 
garet, I 'm taking five kinds of pills and 
tonics, and as I Ve lived with my own 
stomach now a large number of years, 
I am perfectly sure that the reason why 
my appetite remains so poor is that 
I'm constantly dosing, and you need 
bring me no more of those strychnine 
tablets and you can put the pepsin away, 
and as for the liquid things in bottles, 
I won't take them either." 

I stuck to this for quite a little 

while, but Margaret had got it into her 

head that my whole life and existence 

depended on a few little pasteboard 

boxes of pills. Lines that I don't re- 

90 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



member having seen in her face since 
Betty was so ill appeared there. Fi- 
nally, she came to my bedside and took 
my hand and said : " Mother, I simply 
can't bear to see you trifling with your 
health in this way, and I don't think it 's 
fair to us to do as you are doing. You 
can't get well, and you can't get strong, 
unless you will take care of yourself." 
Her tone and her whole manner 
touched me, and I saw what people who 
live in the Land of Old Age sometimes 
forget, — how great and pressing the 
things we know to be of little importance 
seem to our great, grown-up sons and 
daughters. There was in Margaret's 
tone and in her attitude almost that 
poignant agony that a mother has over 
her sick child. 

She could not bear to have me sick. 
91 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



I saw then that each meal that I could 
not eat, each time I did not take my 
medicine, — even my just rebellion 
against my trained nurse, — had taken 
from her a little of her strength and 
vitality. 

It is hard, when one is ill and suffer- 
ing one's self, to realize the extent to 
which this reacts on those about us, 
especially for us older people. I had a 
quick vision of Margaret's seeing me 
walking off wantonly, needlessly, into 
the land of shadows. I know, of course, 
that when the day comes, pills and 
trained nurses and gruel will not retard 
my footsteps, and I shall very much 
like to pass through the series of minor 
illnesses that may be before me in my 
own way, comfortably, without too much 

nagging and without having my hair- 

92 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



brushes hidden, or having to lie in bed 
when I know it is bad for my back. But 
after all, I think I saw on that morning 
that my annoyances had been small 
compared to Margaret's anxieties. She 
threw aside for the moment the smiling 
" You-will-be-better-to-morrow " mask 
that she had consistently assumed from 
the beginning of my illness, and I re- 
alized for the first time that the week 
had been one where shadowy fears had 
pressed about her, taking from her her 
gayety, her confidence. Each time I 
had sprung from my bed to get some- 
thing I wanted, she had seen the 
shadows about me ; each moment of 
my weakness had whispered desolation 
to her. 

I thought of the long evenings that 

she and Dudley had passed together, 

93 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



discussing with the trained nurse my 
shortcomings and my willfuhiesses ; 
and I saw that my small rebellions had 
been to her not small rebellions at all, but 
willful throwing away of so many of 
the days that it may be yet permitted 
us to pass together. 

For one moment I was almost sorry 
that I had sent that woman away, but 
that moment of weakness did not stay 
long, because, after all, it 's I who will 
have to be the judge of how to lengthen 
out the span of those days. At the same 
time, as we sat there together in silence, 
Margaret holding my hand and I look- 
ing at the anxious lines in her face, I 
made up my mind to take the pepsin 
and the strychnine and all the other 
things that they make such a fuss 
over. 

94 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



So I told Margaret when she implored 
(and I can't translate to you her accent 
of anxiety) , " Now do take the medicine 
the doctor left for you ; it certainly will 
strengthen you," — "I will, Margaret." 

But even then a flicker of spirit rose 
in me ; for all of Margaret's and Dud- 
ley's agonizing, I'm not dead yet, — 
very far from it, — and it 's very seldom 
that I get a good chance to influence 
my children's lives. So that is why I 
said to my daughter : — 

"Margaret, I can see that you are 
very anxious about me. But I 'm equally 
anxious about you, though I don't pre- 
sume to nag you and make such a fuss 
about it. I will take the tablets and the 
tonics and the powders, and even the 
horrid things put up in gelatine cap- 
sules, which are as hard to swallow as 

95 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



any hen's egg in its shell, if you will 
make a few concessions on your part : 
that heavy tailored skirt that you've 
been wearing I know is the cause of 
your backache. Will you promise me 
to put it aside, for a while anyway ? " 

" Yes, mother," Margaret agreed. 

^'' And will you try to eat your meals 
more regularly ? " (For Margaret has 
been doing a great deal of outside club 
work, and half the time comes home to 
lunch ten or fifteen minutes late, when 
all the meat is cold and spoiled, and I 
know that it will injure her stomach in 
the long run.) 

"Margaret," I said, "I've studied 

the rules of health for a great many 

years, and as you are fond of boasting, 

I 'm in pretty good condition as a rule, 

considering my time of life and the 

96 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



things I Ve been through. So if I 'm to 
do what you want me to, I think it is 
only fair that you should, in smaller 
matters, be guided by me a little bit ; 
and this sitting and reading so far from 
the light and spoiling your eyes is a 
thing that has got to be put a stop to, if 
I am to take another strychnine tablet." 

Margaret agreed readily to all these 
things. It may seem to you that I was 
taking an unfair advantage ; but I do 
my share of silent worrying on my own 
side, and it seemed to me only fair 
exchange, because undoubtedly it will 
benefit my health to be saved these 
small anxieties, besides benefiting Mar- 
garet's. 

Margaret agreed readily because I 

think she saw the reasonableness and 

justice of my remarks. 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



" May I bring you tapioca now ? " 
she asked at the end of my talk. 

" No, Margaret," I replied. " I am 
going down to dinner to-day, and I am 
going to eat some solid food -things 
that I want to eat, which I know will 
be much better for my health." 



CHAPTER V 

THE COMPENSATIONS OF AGE 

I GRUMBLE a good deal, it seems to me, 
about my children's too anxious care of 
me ; I make life seem shorn of many 
of its pleasures,— and so it is ; but age 
also clips life of complications. It is the 
great simplifier. 

For instance, the moment my eye fell 
upon my new neighbors, I knew I 
wasn't going to like them. This may 
sound as though I am disagreeable 
and ill-natured, but I don't think I am. 
Indeed I have lived so long in this world 
that I feel free to express my opinions 
without being afraid of being misunder- 
stood. A younger woman might not give 
out so frankly what she thinks, as she 



99 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



has her reputation to make ; but one 
opinion, more or less, of my neighbors, 
will not alter my reputation, for if I have 
proved myself, in the long time I have 
stayed in this world, kindly and not 
hard to please and ready to make al- 
lowances, I believe people will make 
allowances for me, and it will not hurt 
me one bit to ease my mind by saying 
that I do not fancy my new neighbors. 
I don't suppose I had any reason for it, 
for they seemed very nice and pleasant 
people. 

The older woman, the one Margaret 
picked out as a companion for me, was 
fastened into one of those new-fangled 
frocks that have hooks in every conceiv- 
able spot where a hook ought not to 
be and none where they ought to be. 

Not that this had anything to do with 

100 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



my liking her, as I have plenty of 
friends of my own age who enjoy keep- 
ing up with the styles and like to have 
the dressing hour one of martyrdom. I 
just didn't feel that these people and I 
would have anything to talk about, and 
conversation would always be of that 
rudimentary kind that happens on the 
outskirts of acquaintance. 

I said nothing about this, however, 
and in a few days, when Margaret sug- 
gested we should call, " It seems," said 
I, " rather damp to me to-day. You run 
over, Margaret dear, so as to be nice 
and cordial and leave my cards. If we 
are in for a spell of bad weather, I 
may not get around for a week or two." 

So saying, I settled myself comfort- 
ably in my chair and told the maid to 

telephone to my friend Mrs. Welling- 

101 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



ton to see if she would come and play 
logomachy. I sat there waiting with 
that most comfortable of all feelings in 
my heart, — a feeling that comes of 
having decently avoided a disagreeable 
duty. I looked back over my long life 
and thought of the many times I had 
called and called and called on people 
I did n't want to, — new church people 
who I thought were lonely; people who 
were friends of friends of mine with 
whom I had no more in common than 
I had with a flagstaff. 

Before she went out, Margaret asked, 
"Are there any more calls you don't 
feel like making? for I might as well 
do them all up, now that I am started." 

At that I made out a list of all 

the people I did n't especially want to 

see in town. It was not a very large 

102 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



one, for I am fond of my fellow crea- 
tures. Though, strictly speaking, my 
day of calling is over, when I want to 
see any one I go and see them and 
spend a good hour or more in a real 
talk. I am no longer a young woman; 
I am an elderly woman, and will soon 
be old, and the day for me, thank good- 
ness, is past when I spend an afternoon 
in that most senseless occupation, — 
fifteen-minute calls, where the people 
are called upon according to neighbor- 
hood, and not because any one feels any 
particular need of their conversation. 

In many ways, as we advance in 
years, we return to the attitude we had 
when we were children. If we grow 
old wisely, we lay aside the senseless 
forms and meaningless conventions of 

society and go back to a more primi- 

103 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



tive mode of social intercourse, pick- 
ing our friends the way children do, — 
because we like them, — spending time 
enough with them to get some real good 
out of them. 

It was with joy that I saw my daugh- 
ter depart to call upon the Towners, 
for this was the name of the new peo- 
ple. In this world, of course Towners 
have to be called upon, but oh, glori- 
ous day! the time is past when it is 
I who must do it. If I have to forego 
some things I would like to do; if old 
age in the shape of waning strength 
says to me often, " Thou shalt not ! " 
so do my years smile upon me and say 
to me, " Thou needst not." 

I have moments of unhappiness and 
rebellion, as I suppose most older wo- 
men have as old age creeps on them 

104 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



unawares as they work and dream and 
live; I have moments of sorrow that 
my real work in the world is done, and 
moments of sadness that my children 
no longer come to me, but spare me, 
not wishing to trouble me ; but oh, with 
what happiness do I leave the perform- 
ing of some duties to the younger gen- 
eration. Think what an emancipation it 
would be if some voice should cry, — 
" No more calls ! " This is what the 
voice of age said to me, as I sat that 
afternoon by the window watching my 
dear daughter ply dutifully forth. Many 
years will have to pass by before she 
can sit down quietly before her pleasant 
open fire and rejoice that never, never 
again will she need to make a duty 
call. 

As I watched Margaret go her way 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



on her round of calls, I saw all the 
family of tiresome duties before me; 
not only calls, but committee meetings 
of one kind and another. Not a com- 
mittee meeting do I have to go to. I 
don't have to feel like a beggar getting 
money for the church organ or the new 
church carpet. I did these things will- 
mgly and cheerfully in my time, and 
now, thank goodness, I don't have to 
do them. I even make the confession 
that there are some times, when Mar- 
garet says to me, " Mother, it 's too 
rainy for you to go to church," that I 
agree with her with a certain alacrity. 

Oh, blessed are the immunities of 
age! 

This morning there walked past my 

house a young person. She was pretty, 

she was young. I have no doubt that I 

106 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



should have been an object of pity in 
her eyes as I sat there in my com- 
fortable wide chair in my comfortable 
dress, which, if you please, is a waist 
and skirt, the waist hooking in the 
front. This pretty young person's back 
hair was built out one foot behind her 
head with what aids I am too innocent 
to pretend to tell you; her frock was 
of the kind that fits with distressing 
closeness until it bursts out in a flare of 
pleats at the knees, and she wore upon 
her head a prodigious hat. Her type 
was not extreme. I see young women 
and maidens every day more fantas- 
tically and uncomfortably arrayed. 

" Oh," I thought to myself, " there 's 
a spring in youth, to be sure, and a 
joyousness in it, but oh, how uncom- 
fortable youth makes itself ! " 

107 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



I see my daughter Margaret clawing 
around her spinal column, trying to 
hook her clothes up the back, and re- 
joice that I am of an age where, fash- 
ion book or no fashion book, things may 
yet fasten up the front. I don't need to 
wear a hat that looks like a chimney 
or a monstrous mushroom; I can wear 
broad, low-heeled, cloth-topped shoes 
while the styles in shoes skip around 
from heavy mannish to paper soles and 
pointed toes. 

There are women, of course, who do 
not take advantage of the blessed priv- 
ileges which age brings them, but, after 
all, not many of us. Most of us have 
sense given us to realize that there are 
certain fads in this world that we are 
through with. 

So I confess that I saw the little girl 
108 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



with the imposing hair and hat go her 
way without envying her her youth. 
Would I not like to be young again? 
Who would not if they could have 
youth plus the wisdom which their 
years have given them? 

It may be that it is "sour grapes" 
that makes me feel as I do, but a pro- 
found thankfulness sweeps over me 
when I run through the long list of 
things I need not do any more, and if 
I rejoice that certain distasteful duties 
are removed from me, how much more 
do I rejoice over the amusements that 
did not amuse me that I no longer 
have to go to. No more do I have to 
attend concerts of an ultra - classical 
nature; no longer do I have to read 
the newest book if I do not choose 

to; if I am ever bored, it is not any 

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longer by those things which are sup- 
posed to divert me. 

Fancy your life stripped of all the 
things that are tiresome to do, that are 
a weariness to your spirit. "What does 
all this cry about the simple life mean, 
— this turning to nature, this camp- 
ing in Maine woods, this flying to httle 
shacks by the seashore? Not so much 
the desire for beauty, for that is acces- 
sible to very many people, but leisure 
to enjoy it, and attaining this leisure by 
throwing out of the window what one 
might call " the padding of life." I do 
not have to leave my comfortable home 
for an uncomfortable, half - furnished 
shanty to revel in the beauty of the 
maple tree which makes a golden glory 
outside my window. Without effort on 

my part life has handed me these extra 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



hours in which to look around the 
world and enjoy the beauties of it with 
peace in my heart, and it seems that for 
those who look upon age rightly, life 
becomes a spacious, roomy place. For 
some the spaciousness means loneliness ; 
through the vaulted roominess of the 
days voices echo infrequently ; the wide 
vistas of time are unpeopled and bare; 
memories only walk through, — shad- 
owy and with sad eyes. I c^n only 
thank God that age has not come to 
me in such a guise. For me and many 
of my contemporaries the priceless gift 
of time has been the recompense of our 
having lived so long in this world ; and 
instead of our days being full of the 
needful but distasteful duties, and clut- 
tered, besides, and choked with the 

pleasureless pleasurings in which I see 

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those younger than myself spending 
their days, we may now turn and do 
the things which we have always 
wanted to do. And for those who have 
lived with zest and vigor, — that is to 
say, those who have lived at all, — there 
is hardly one who has not had some pur- 
suit or some taste which was crowded 
out of their lives. If you look around 
the world you may see any number 
of vigorous elderly women doing the 
things they wanted to do all their days, 
and doing them with the earnestness 
and relish of children at play. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE SPENDING OF TIME 

Theee are some older people to whom 
life has not handed out so many vacant 
spaces, and whose days yet remain 
crowded, not with the unavoidable du- 
ties, but with those that others impose 
upon them. 

I know a valiant old lady of seventy 
whose vigorous and sane presence was 
of such inspiration to her many daugh- 
ters that " mother " was on a perpetual 
round of visits of advice and consola- 
tion. As is the case with so dominant 
and self-reliant a nature, she had raised 
up a brood of fine women, but women 
accustomed to rely upon her, even into 

middle age. As happens often in such 

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cases, she first domineered over them 
and they in turn ate up her time and 
her leisure until she rebelled against 
this tender slavery of her own creating. 
One day she arose, saying, " Before an- 
other of these granddaughters of mine 
gets the croup, I 'm going around the 
world ! " — which, it seems, she had al- 
ways desired to do, but had not had the 
time for. So, with much dexterity, she 
eluded the vigilance of her loving chil- 
dren, hopped upon a boat, and informed 
them by telegram where she was go- 
ing. 

" For," she told me by letter, " I have 
no intention of viewing the marvels of 
this earth with a rhinitis pill popped 
into my mouth by one of my daughters 
every few minutes. I don't want to go 

through the tombs of the Ptolemies 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



with goloshes on my feet, as I know I 
should have to do if one of the girls 
went with me." 

In one's travels around the earth one 
meets many elderly people who, like 
this friend of mine, are seeing at last 
the sights they had planned to see all 
their days ; fulfilling the dreams, often- 
times, of a far remote youth. 

Again, it is some desire for know- 
ledge that we indulge in in our old age. 
Two old friends of mine — a retired 
minister and his wife — are at this mo- 
ment pursuing the study of biology 
with all the ardor of youth. Through 
the years of his long Hf e this dear man 
and his wife had looked forward to the 
time when they might slake their curi- 
osity 'about the wonders of the earth, 

and now they are doing it with the pas- 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



sion of youth. It was a real need with 
them and a true desire which they had 
always between them kept alive. I do 
not know any reward that a life of toil 
can hold more precious than this fulfill- 
ment of a lifelong desire. 

Another friend of mine had a very 
full life, though she never married. 
She took care of her brother's house, 
— a complicated establishment full of 
guests ; but always she cherished a love 
for the Romance languages and read 
much of their literature in translation ; 
and when she had time, which was after 
her sixty-fifth birthday, she learned 
Spanish and French and Italian. 

At this minute, down the street Mrs. 

Baker is making rugs and carpets out 

of all the rags she has saved for the 

last thirty years. The story of how she 

116 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



has conserved these pieces is an epic, 
a tribute to the force and persistence 
of the human will. Her children, one 
and all, have tried to make her throw 
away "all that rubbish." They have 
pointed out to her that her collection 
of old pieces was a mania, and that no- 
thing would ever come of it; also, they 
might be doing " somebody some good." 
During her absence her daughters would 
lead commiserating friends to the attic 
and show them rag-bags bursting, trunks 
overflowing, bureau drawers yawning, 
with the pieces their mother had col- 
lected. Oh, the younger and older gen- 
erations had some doughty passages- 
at-arms over what the younger women 
called a " needless and unhygienic ac- 
cumulation." 

" Some day," Mrs. Baker persisted, 
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"I intend to make rag carpets from 
them — when I have time." 

She has time now, and, I am glad to 
say, is doing what she always wanted 
to. The making of rag carpets may not 
have been a high goal to aim at, but 
what matter? The longer I live, the 
more I believe it is the spirit in which 
we do things that makes our acts pleas- 
ing or displeasing to a Greater Intel- 
ligence. Who knows whether rag car- 
pets made with a cheerfulness which is 
in itself a prayer may not be more pleas- 
ing to the Lord than much more pre- 
tentious occupations performed sadly? 

To many of us the moment of leisure 
comes too late; we allow the daily occu- 
pations of our business to crowd upon 
us so in middle life that, when old age 

comes upon us, it finds us without re- 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



source. So it is with men, while women 
fill up the depths of the spirit with a 
comitless reiteration of detail, bank- 
rupting themselves ; leaving themselves 
dependent upon the good will of others 
for all amusement. 

Many of us have worked so hard and 
life has treated us so ungently that all 
the fair lights that burned for us in the 
country of youth have been put out ; 
but, thank God! it is n't so with all. 
That elusive moment, "when I have 
time, " that every one talks about, comes 
to almost all of us, and it finds a certain 
number of us with a will to do what we 
like. But here with the things that we 
want to do, we often find ourselves in 
the position of children who plan out 
tasks that their little strength will not 

perform. For ever and ever we bruise 

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ourselves against the limitations of the 
flesh. Oh, the books that we wish to 
read, for which our eyes do not serve ; 
the pleasurings denied us ; the work cut 
away from us because of the limitation 
of our strength, and the knowledge 
that this limitation must always increase. 
The size of the earth over which one 
may roam shrinks day by day, until it 
decreases to the house, — to one's room, 
— to one's bed ; and finally to the nar- 
rowest space of all. 

So side by side with the things that 
we can now do because we have more 
time are the things that we have no 
strength for and the things that our 
children promise to do for us and never 
get around to, — our children who are 
so eager to perform all sorts of small 

kindnesses. 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



I know that I have been wanting for 
three years to straighten my attic the 
way I would like to see it done, and 
neither have I been permitted to do it, 
nor will my children do it for me. It 
is one of those things that has got to 
be done by one of the family ; no 
cleaning-woman can do anything ex- 
cept the heavier part of the work. 
And now, whenever I go up and sort 
over a trunk of letters or a chest of 
drawers, some one is sure to hear me 
walking around up there and come after 
me, until what ' Margaret and Dudley 
call my " attic face " is a joke in the 
family. They pretend that there is a 
certain joyful but furtive look comes 
over me when I have "designs," as 
Dudley says, on the attic. 

" That attic, I hope, will never get 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



cleared," he tells me. " It is all the joy 
to you that a double life would be. It 
gives you the joy of forbidden fruit. As 
long as it is n't cleared, you can sneak 
up there and go on a terrible debauch; 
of course you are generally ill and miser- 
able after it, but who minds that when 
they have made a night of it?" 

In this disrespectful way does my son 
joke me, not realizing that the state of 
the attic is a real source of annoyance 
to me. 

Almost every older woman has some- 
thing equivalent to my attic. Oftentimes 
this attic is a thing a woman is strong 
enough to do herself, but which her 
children, with their too loving care, pre- 
vent her doing. Sometimes little house- 
hold duties that she has attended to all 
her life herself, from one day to another, 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



her children have decided she isn't 

strong enough to do. Perhaps one time 

she got tired ; who does n't ? Young 

people as well as old get tired. And 

sometimes I think that those old people 

are most to be envied, after all, who 

keep forever in the harness and to whom 

each day brings its compulsory duties ; 

in them lies the essence of youth, which, 

after all, I suppose, has a good deal to 

do with the feeling that one is helping 

to make the wheels of the world's work 

go round. 

I think that many a woman has had 

her life shortened by this fretting that 

might have been avoided, much more 

than it would have been by the fatigue 

that doing what she wished to would 

incur. When day after day one asks 

those young people, upon whom one 

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has become dependent for some service, 
to look after this or that, the chains of 
age weigh heavily. We have to ask 
in all the varying tones that the de- 
pendent must use, from the cajolery 
with which we get our own way to the 
futile bursts of irritation, and in the end 
perhaps resort to subconscious strategy, 
lucky at last if we can but accomplish 
our purpose. When I do this there is a 
feeling deep in my heart of how round- 
about, how circuitous, are my acts, how 
unlike the " I " that once brought about 
the small things in the world that I 
wished to ; so short a time ago I could 
accomplish in my life, in the ordering 
of my household, what I wished. 

The spaces in our lives that our chil- 
dren have helped to empty by making 

it difficult for us to do those things 

124 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



which they consider harmful for our 
well-being, they try to fill up with their 
kindly and blundering hands. Every 
older woman who lives much with her 
children knows what I mean. 

Margaret and Dudley, I know, feel 
that I don't see enough of women of 
my own age. Mrs, Allen, at the other 
end of the town, and I have a very good 
time together whenever we meet, and 
yet it is quite a distance — for although 
it is a little town where we live, it is 
sprawled all along the Common — for 
us on our old legs to run in and out, 
and we have managed to live half a life- 
time without ever becoming intimate, 
notwithstanding a very real enjoyment 
we have in each other's society. 

This liking Dudley tries to further as 

though it was a hothouse plant. 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



"You look ' down/ mother; shan't I 
telephone to Mrs. Allen? Or let me run 
down in the motor and get her for you." 
Or, " I 'm just going over to Lembury; 
shan't I drop you at Mrs. Allen's for 
a half -hour ? " until Mrs. Allen has be- 
come to me the symbol of "amusing 
mother." 

When I see them at it, it touches me 
in my heart and it touches me in my 
temper as well. I don't want to be 
amused; I don't want to have occupa- 
tion found for me. If I have nothing 
better to do than to sit with my hands 
folded, then I prefer to sit; nor does 
conversation like this affect me in the 
slightest. 

Margaret will say to Dudley : — 

"I think that Mrs. So-and-So has 

changed very much this last year. She 

126 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



has allowed herself to lose interest in 
things." 

"Yes," Dudley will reply, "I think 
an older woman makes a great mistake 
not to cultivate her own hobbies." 

"And beside that," Margaret will add, 
"keep abreast with the times. Now 
there is Mrs. Griscom," she went on in 
reproving tones, " I see her out motor- 
ing with her son almost every day." 

Now here I knew what they were 

getting to ; they wanted me to go out 

in Dudley's new motor. Now, if there 's 

anything I dislike it is nasty, smelly, 

jouncing, child-grazing, dog-smashing, 

chicken-routing motors. I ride along 

with my heart in my mouth, — not 

for my own life and limbs, although 

those are uncomfortable enough being 

jounced along like a piece of corn in a 

127 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



popper, which seems to me no way for 
a woman to spend her few remaming 
years of Hfe; but it is for the people 
along the wayside whom we almost 
crush, — the trembling horses, the 
squawking hens, the frightened chil- 
dren that rack my nerves. 

I don't like motors any more than I 
like trolley cars, although I ride in the 
cars when I have to go from one town 
to another, but I don't enjoy them any 
more than I enjoy trains. If all my 
neighbors want to do it and enjoy it, let 
them, — I don't intend to ! But Marga- 
ret always had a mania for having me 
ride ; before Dudley got the car, it was 
carriages, but now, under one pretext or 
another, they try to get me to go mo- 
toring with Dudley. They say that if I 

once get into the car I will get to like 

128 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



it, but I know that I shall not. I shall 
not get to like it any more than I shall 
ever have Mrs. Allen for my bosom 
friend. 

These things can't be forced upon 
one; we will for ever and ever, young 
or old, choose our amusement from 
some hidden spring within ourselves, 
and if new doors are to be opened to 
us of enjoyment, it is our hands that 
must lift the latch, though we follow 
in the lead of some beloved person. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE LAND OF OLD AGE 

I HAVE talked, I suppose, rather fanci- 
fully about what I have chosen to call 
the Land of Old Age. It is because old 
age has seemed to me often not only a 
state of mind, or a physical condition, 
but a sort of different dimension, — an 
actual country where we who are older 
must live. Often I see people approach- 
ing its boundaries, withdrawing from 
them, ignoring them, and next I know, 
I come across a new citizen. It is an 
invisible country, — this Land of Old 
Age, — and however young you are, 
you have been near it. I should count 
you unfortunate, indeed, if in the heat 

of the day you had not turned into its 

130 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



shady by-paths and lingered a moment 
with its quiet dwellers. It is a very 
peaceful land; there is not much work 
to be done; duty is rarely seen; so sel- 
dom, in fact, that sometimes those of us 
who have gone there to live for good 
feel that we have passed our time of 
usefulness, and have moments of hot 
resentment that we are not out in the 
world doing its work for it. 

I feel that way myself often, and at 
such times make excursions outside; 
always the gentle hands of my children 
lead me back to my own country. And 
I sometimes feel that the reason we re- 
sist taking up our places there is this 
sense that we are not allowed to come 
out when we wish; that we are kept 
prisoners, not through our own weak- 
nesses, but because there are certain 

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conventions as to what is suitable or 
unsuitable for us old people. 

But lately I have come to believe that 
the people who live in the Land of Old 
Age have their own appointed part to 
play, and that they help make up the 
sum of life. 

After all, one need not dust and 
sweep and make pies and cake, to be 
of service to those we love. We would 
not wish to see our little children fetch 
and carry, and yet they are the dearest 
things in the world to us. So we older 
people, I believe, do more than we know 
for those we love when we sit in our 
own quiet country, as I found out a little 
while ago when I started to make an 
excursion into the world that works. 

The mistake our younger people 

make is in regarding age as a fixed 

132 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



quantity. They act on the firm convic- 
tion that you are older every day you 
live, whereas age is as relative and va- 
riable as youth. You have only to warm 
the blood with any emotion, — joy or 
relief from suspense or patriotism or 
pity, — and the Land of Old Age van- 
ishes; especially when there is a great 
calamity, the old people troop forth as 
eager to lend a hand, as strong to do 
a day's work, as ever they were ; and I 
think it is not their fault that they so 
often turn their disappointed faces back 
to their familiar country without having 
taken part in what is going on. 

When I heard, for instance, that a 
little town which squats dirty and hard- 
working on the outskirts of our village 
had been flooded in the spring freshet, 

and that there were twenty homeless 

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families and a hundred and fifty people 

out of work, I was eager to help. Our 

whole town at once bestirred itself to 

do something, and I was glad that the 

Committee of Ways and Means met at 

our house, even if their ways of doing 

things seemed cumbrous to me. In my 

day when we gave benefits, we had no 

committees nor chairmen nor any other 

kind of machinery. One of the ladies 

went around with a notebook from 

house to house and asked what might 

be expected from each one, and her 

paper at the end of the day read : " Mrs. 

Smith, four dozen biscuits ; Mrs. Jones, 

two layer-cakes," etc. Mrs. Jeremiah 

Curtis and Mrs. Henry Lessey always 

did the scalloped oysters. (How I should 

enjoy a plate of scalloped oysters like 

that for my supper to-night !) And in 

134 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



this easy fashion we brought the thing 
about. 

But I was eager, just the same, to 
join the ladies assembled in my par- 
lors. And now an odd thing happened. 
I suppose as one gets along in years 
one gets acquainted less readily with 
the new people; for here in my own 
village where I have lived over thirty 
years, and in my own house, I found 
myself an outsider, surrounded by peo- 
ple whom I barely knew by sight. They 
began the meeting in the stiff, formal 
way I believe is known as parliament- 
ary, but after a little while they lim- 
bered up and began discussing the 
affair more naturally, and I became in- 
terested. It came over me that some- 
thing ought to be done right away for 

these poor creatures. So I said : — 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



^' Ladies, this party five days off is n't 
going to clothe those blessed children, 
or their fathers or mothers, for that 
matter, who were driven out of their 
homes in the night with only what they 
had on them." 

"Why, what a good idea ! " exclaimed 
one of the ladies. 

Perhaps I am supersensitive, but it 
seemed to me she was surprised that I 
at my age was capable of any ideas at 
all. I was about to say that I would 
have a canopy-top called from the stable 
and make a house-to-house canvass and 
have a big lot of things ready to send out 
by the evening trolley, when some one 
said : " I move that we appoint an Im- 
mediate Relief Committee. Can't some 
one ring up Susan Hillsborough ? She 's 

just the one to push that through." 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



In spite of myself I felt a little dis- 
appointed, for it is a great satisfaction 
to do things for people one's self and 
to do them in one^s own way. Before I 
spoke I had seen myself on the rounds 
in the canopy-top, but now I suddenly 
felt very much out of it again. Not 
only were there faces and methods of 
work new to me, but my own little idea 
was picked away from me and gobbled 
into their cumbrous modern machinery. 
There was a great deal of telephoning 
back and forth, and it was on my tongue 
a half-dozen times to offer to go; but 
I realized that the canopy-top and I, 
from whatever point of view one chose 
to look at us, were not a committee. 

So I held my tongue — until I got 
interested again. It was to be, I gath- 
ered, a huge entertainment, with all 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



sorts of elaborations. All the simple 
affairs, such as we would in former 
times have given for two years rolled 
into one, wouldn't have made such a 
great affair. I who knew the slender 
resources of our little town so well, for 
we are not a rich village, found myself 
saying,— 

" "Won't the cost of getting it up take 
away the greater part of the profits?" 

" It will be such an advertisement of 
the whole disaster," one of them as- 
sured me. " The other towns in the 
neighborhood, after our example, will 
feel they have to do something hand- 
some." 

There was not the least suggestion 

of patronage in her tone, and it was 

not due to her that I felt that my little 

remark had flown so wide of the point, 

138 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



but only that we talked across the gap 
Time had made between us, she on the 
one side understanding the new meth- 
ods, and I understanding only those I 
was used to. But all the same, that 
afternoon I stood on my own little ter- 
ritory and listened to how people did 
things in the world, with an ever-grow- 
ing sense of isolation. Many of the 
things in this world that are hard to 
bear are no one's fault at all; they are 
so because the world is as it is. 

All the next day my daughter Mar- 
garet bounced in and out unceasingly. 
I tried to catch her a dozen times, for 
I wanted so very much to do my some- 
thing, however little, for the distressed 
people, — I have always been so used 
to doing my share in the world. At last 

I buttonholed Margaret. 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



" Listen, Margaret," I began. 

" Excuse me for a moment, darling ; 
there 's the telephone." 

After a hurried conference, Margaret 
pinned on her hat. I followed her up. 

" Before you go, " I hastened to say, 
" let me ask you one thing." 

" I 've only four minutes to catch the 
four-thirty-two trolley," she answered, 
and kissed me affectionately and dashed 
away. 

One of the children ran after her, 
calling, — 

" Mamma, may I — " 

" Ask your uncle," called my daugh- 
ter ; and her tone and gesture, as 
though she couldn't stand one more 
thing, made me see under what pres- 
sure she was working. 

At that moment my son Dudley 
140 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



walked up the path. I was planted on the 
steps where Margaret had left me when 
she whirled by. 

"Anything I can do ? " he asked. 

He was hurried, too, but of all my 
children he is the one who always has 
time for me. 

" All I want to know is, do they want 
me to make cake for them," I said, 
with some spirit, for I was tired of 
being put off like an importunate child. 
I make an excellent Hartford election- 
cake, and it is much better on the second 
or third day. My cake, indeed, is famous 
among my children and grandchildren, 
and I thought that in this way I could 
give my mite to the poor distressed 
people. 

" That would be awfully nice, mo- 
ther." Dudley's tone was apologetic. 

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" But they Ve already arranged for the 
cake, — the baker gives the material at 
wholesale prices and does the work. 
We wanted to pay for his time, but he 
says it will be a good advertisement. 
Not that yours wouldn't be lots bet- 
ter — " 

" I wanted to do something for them," 
I said forlornly. 

" Why, did n't you do enough ? You 
know you've given more to the Imme- 
diate Relief Committee than you can 
afford. Is n't that enough ? " He took 
my arm. " Here," he said, " let me bring 
your chair into the shade. It 's so plea- 
sant here this afternoon. I only wish I 
had the time — " and Dudley was off 
too. 

The last thing I wanted was to sit 

quietly in the shade, for I am what the 

142 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



people around here call " a mighty spry 
old lady." Just how old I will not tell, 
for it was a convention of my genera- 
tion that a woman ought not to be a 
minute older than she could help. I am 
not old enough yet, at any rate, to have 
taken to boasting about the remarkable 
number of years I have stayed in the 
world. But I am old enough for my 
middle-aged sons and daughters to 
boast for me about how active I am for 
my years, — and they boast about it as 
if the fair health I enjoy was some vir- 
tue of their own. Perhaps the good 
care they take of me is the reason for 
my being so well, but down in the bot- 
tom of my heart is the conviction that, 
had I followed all their advice, and led 
the packed - in - cotton - wool existence 

they have marked out for me, and sent 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



for the doctor as often as they have 
wanted me to, I should be a bedridden 
old hypochondriac at this moment in- 
stead of being so ready and willing to 
do my share of work. 

I sat down obediently, however, and 
picked up a magazine that was lying 
near by ; and under pretense of reading 
I reviewed the last two days, quite dis- 
passionately and soberly. I had come 
forth from the quiet Land of Old Age. 
For a moment, in the stress of interest 
for those poor homeless people, I had 
forgotten that Margaret and her Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means and I were 
not contemporaries. I had had sugges- 
tions to give, and I had been ready and 
strong to lend a hand where a hand was 
needed. I had forgotten, I say, that I 

am what people call " old," and now as 

144 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



I sat idle in the shade I remembered, 
and all at once I felt rather tired and 
strangely aloof from the things that 
were going on around me. 

Through no one's fault except my 
own I had been thwarted and my own 
ideas taken from me. My fault was the 
irreparable one of belonging to the 
generation of those whose business it 
is to sit comfortable in the shade and 
wait— who can say for what? Just 
then my little grandchild Edith came 
up to me, and, without asking, took my 
magazine from my hand to look at the 
pictures, and it occurred to me that those 
older children who had taken my work 
from me — without asking, either — 
had done it as serenely unconscious 
as Edith was that I might want the 
work for myself. 

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And was n't I a still older child my- 
self ? Need I sit and sulk because the 
other children would n't let me play at 
their game ? They could play it better 
without me, they did n't need me, 
thought I, with the best philosophy in 
the world, — and all the time I wanted 
to be playing with them, for in my play 
I would forget for a little while that I 
was n't, after all, their age. I think that 
our dear children who look after us so 
well and see that we don't tire our- 
selves, and scold us gently when we 
sit in drafts, — we " spry old ladies," 
— forget, in the care of our ailing 
bodies, that it is better sometimes for 
the body to be tired, if the spirit is n't. 
It is good for us to take what part we 
may in the affairs of life. The Land of 

Old Age is n't, as our children think, 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



just a place for people to coddle them- 
selves in. When I got so far in my 
thought, two more of my grandchildren 
ran up to me. They had been sent home 
from the town hall. It seems they had 
been in the way. 

" Well," thought I, " here we are, 
too old and too young. We can play 
together if neither of us can play with 
the big children." 

It came over me that perhaps it was 

just as well that we were n't all of us 

hurrying and working, and that at the 

day's end there should be some one not 

too tired. Just then there turned in at 

the gate a friend of mine. Though she 

is still in her twenties, she and I are the 

best of friends. Her pleasant face was 

lined with care, and she looked worried 

and tired. 

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" Dear child, what is the matter ? " 
I asked. 

"It's that the Daughters of the 
American Revolution and the Woman's 
Village Improvement Society each want 
to decorate the hall, and they 're quar- 
reling, and nothing 's getting done," 
she said, and burst into tears. 

I patted her head and wiped her tears 
off, and we made some iced tea, and I 
sent her off at last quite cheered up. 

" I had to come down and get out of 
it for a minute. It was so nice of you 
to be sitting there so cool and rested," 
she added enviously. 

Then one by one my tired, over- 
worked children came home to me. 
Without knowing what they did, they 
turned to me for comfort and for rest, 

and I took care of them and smoothed 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



out their diiSculties, and laughed with 
them and sympathized with them. They 
seemed very young to me, my big chil- 
dren, and I realized that they turned to 
me as they always had, and that I still 
had things to give them and things to 
do for them. What if my body must be 
quiet ? It seemed to me that night that 
I gave them their supper and put them 
to bed as I had done so many times 
when they were small, for there are 
blessed moments in all mothers' lives 
when their grown children seem again 
little children. They had come to me in 
the quiet land I live in to be rested, as 
every one in the world turns to that 
land of peace, as all busy, hurried work- 
ers and tired mothers turn into these 
still, quiet roads. 

There we sit, we older men and wo- 
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men, waiting for our children to come 
to us. They find us there ready to tell 
them how little their little troubles 
mean, for in our country the perspec- 
tives are long, and we look down long 
vistas on the road of years. In their 
great troubles we can say, "I know, I 
understand," for we have worked and 
have seen all the things our children 
must see. And if now and then the 
world of work calls to us, and if for a 
moment we like to pretend that the de- 
tails of the hour are important, let us 
go out at will, and play at work, for in 
our hearts we know that we live in the 
Land of Old Age. 



CHAPTER VIII 

GRANDMOTHERS AND GRANDCHILDREN 

The human beings that are closest to 
the Land of Old Age are the children. 
In so many ways their limitations are 
ours. Margaret has to apply the same 
" Thou shalt nots " to Betty that she 
does to me. For instance, I had planned 
to go over for a game of backgammon 
with an old friend of mine, Eliza Storrs, 
and had n't paid much attention to the 
weather ; neither had my little grand- 
daughter Betty; so each of us was 
making her preparations briskly when 
Margaret nipped us both in the bud. 
Betty was easy enough to nip. All 
Margaret had to do with her was to tell 

her quite openly and frankly that to- 

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day was a nasty day, quite unsuitable 
for a little girl to be abroad in. It was 
a different story with me. I was a child 
of a larger growth, headstrong, and 
hard to manage, so my daughter ap- 
proached me with tact, as one must 
children of my sort. She opened fire 
craftily in this wise : — 

"Wasn't it awful about poor Mrs. 
Allen's hip?" said she. " I hear she is n't 
getting on at all." (Mrs. Allen fell the 
other day on a slippery pavement and 
broke her hip.) " Her daughter begged 
and begged her to take a carriage, but 
she wouldn't," my guileful daughter 
continued. " Imagine her feelings when 
her mother was brought home. They 
say she will always have to walk with a 
crutch." 

Now a great many more people of 
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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



Margaret's age get hurt every year 
than women of mine, but I did n't feel 
like arguing the point. 

" It was just such a day. I suppose 
it 's silly of me, but every time you go 
out in bad weather since then — " says 
Margaret, coming to the point. 

" Is it bad underfoot? " I asked. 

^^ Awful! '''^ Margaret replied fer- 
vently. " People fairly skate along." 

" I won't go, then," I decided. 

I must say that while I see through 
Margaret's guile, I hke to be given the 
semblance of choice, and so I suppose 
does the child who is hard to manage. 

I heard Betty asking if she could n't 
have some little girls to play with her, 
and Margaret answer that she doubted 
if other mothers would let their chil- 
dren out, so I called Betty up to me. 

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In ten minutes we had both forgotten 
the weather and everything else; we 
might have been the same age, so much 
we enjoyed each other's society. 

The front door slammed, and out 
popped Margaret into the leg-breaking 
weather. 

"She won't let us go out, but she 
goes out herself, I notice," observed 
Betty, with pessimism. 

I did notice, and I noticed what Betty 
did n't, that she and I were housebound 
for exactly the same reasons, — since 
neither of us had seemed to have judg- 
ment to stay in of her own accord, Mar- 
garet, being anxious about our health, 
had kept us in. 

IsTor was this the only place that 

Betty and I met on common ground; 

each one of us was dependent, each 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



one of us a source of anxiety to those 
nearest us, each one of us ministered to 
with the same touching devotion. Like 
Betty, I had my moments of rebelhon, 
and my efforts for liberty were as futile 
as hers, — more futile, indeed, for each 
year that passed brought with it new 
reasons for the reasonableness of my 
children's tender tyranny. I suppose it 
is because we are so alike that the sym- 
pathy between old people and little 
children is as old as the world. As 1 
sat telling stories to Betty, I could but 
think how, all the world over, there were 
grandparents rejoicing in their grand- 
children, tending them, playing with 
them, teaching them the old baby games 
that go back to the beginning of time. 
Very often I echo in different words 

some observation of Betty's, — the ig- 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



norance of childhood and the wisdom 

of age touch each other at more points 

than one. Many of the occupations and 

preoccupations of " grown people " like 

Margaret seem equally profitless to 

Betty and to me. We are both so far 

away from the rush of events that the 

passions and ambitions of the world 

trouble neither of us. I have forgotten 

about them, and Betty has n't found 

them out, — we are on an equal footing 

of indifference. Even the faults of the 

grandparents and grandchildren are 

alike; some of us are as self-centred 

as children, and others of us have the 

same naive egotism. 

There is a certain exquisite flattery 

in our grandchildren's company. Betty 

loves everything I do. I seem to her 

witty, accomphshed, and gifted. More 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



than this, she treats me as an equal. 
She is ignorant of drafts; she is not 
afraid all the time that I am going to 
tire myself out. In a word, she does n't 
know that when she comes to see me 
she comes into the Land of Old Age. 
She doesn't know that it's because I 
am old that I have all the time there is, 
while her mother has to " make time " 
for her. For all Betty does for me I 
try to repay her by indulgences of all 
sorts, — sometimes by forbidden indul- 
gences. For these I get mildly scolded, 
but I keep right on. I have yet to hear 
of a boy who grew up a bad man be- 
cause of the little indulgences his grand- 
father showered on him, nor of one 
who grew up a dyspeptic because of the 
surreptitious cookies his grandmother 

gave him. I am sure I am no worse 

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a woman because my grandmother 
begged me off from some well-merited 
punishments. So I spoil my grandchil- 
dren as much as I can, which is as 
much as I am let. 

There was a time when I was n't al- 
lowed to spoil them at all. I hardly 
knew my older grandchildren as babies, 
for I went through, like so many other 
women of my generation, what I call 
*' The Grandmother's Tragedy." 

I first heard about it from Eliza 
Storrs. How often of late years I have 
had occasion to think of the morning 
she plumped herself down in my rock- 
ing-chair. I can remember just how the 
corners of her pleasant mouth were 
drawn down, and in what a discour- 
aged way she flapped her fan back and 

forth. 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



"It's awfully hard work learning 
how to be a grandmother," she com- 
plained. 

" Well," thought I complacently, " if 
there 's one thing I shan't have to learn, 
it 's that. People may have to learn how 
to be mothers, but not how to be grand- 
mothers." 

I was very sure of my ground be- 
cause I had just that minute, you might 
say, got to be a grandmother myself; 
my arms were aching for my little 
grandson, whom I had never seen, my 
oldest son's first child. I was so full of 
the grandmother feeling, so eager for 
sight of the blessed little fellow, that I 
could n't believe the woman of my age 
existed who was n't a ready-made, ac- 
complished grandmother. 

"It's easy enough to be the kind 
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of grandmother you think you ought 
to, but what 's hard is to be the kind 
of grandmother iJiey want you to be," 
Eliza explained, flapping her fan 
mournfully. 

I hadn't the least idea then what 
Eliza was talking about, so I was n't a 
bit sympathetic. I wanted, indeed, to 
laugh, she looked so much like a fat, 
elderly baby herself. 

At that moment a neat nurse in a cap 
passed the house pushing a perambula- 
tor briskly before her. 

" There she is ! That 's the nurse ! " 
Eliza exclaimed. " They call her a 
trained hospital nurse. She gets twenty- 
five dollars a month and her washing 
done, and if I 'd had as big a family as 
Solomon I could n't begin to pretend to 

know one half as much about babies as 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



that woman thinks she does who 's never 
had so much as half a one ! If I had my 
way, oh, how quickly I 'd send her fly- 
ing!" 

It was my first glimpse of a condition 
of affairs I did n't know existed. 

Eliza rose to go, and sent back to me 
over her shoulder, — 

" Mark my words, that baby's head 
will be flat as a pancake if they don't 
take her up more ! " 

I understood everything Eliza said 
soon enough. In a few weeks Ellery 
and Jane, the baby and the nurse, came 
home for a visit. That was when I 
learned first-hand about " The Grand- 
mother's Tragedy." I think all grand- 
mothers will agree that there is a cer- 
tain emotion at the sight of your first 

grandchild that is a little different from 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



any other. Your son who was your baby 
only yesterday has a Httle son of his 
own. 

I felt as other grandmothers do, — 
that it was a pretty heavy responsibility 
for my son and that inexperienced little 
thing, his wife, to undertake, and I 
guessed that they probably were as gay 
and light-hearted about it as I was my- 
self before my own children showed me 
what a grave thing it was to be a mo- 
ther. 

" Never mind," thought I, ''I'^m here, 
fortunately enough for them ! " I was 
ready to pour out on them the treasures 
of my own experience. But more than 
my desire to help them, stronger than 
any wish I have known for years, was 
my longing to hold in my arms my 

blessed grandbaby, — it was so long 

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AlSr ELDERLY WOMAN 



since I had held a baby of my very own. 
Yet, at the same time, it seemed almost 
a joke that I really was old enough, so 
soon, to have grandchildren. I thought 
in my ignorance that being a grandmo- 
ther meant all the pleasure of having 
children and none of the care. So I 
planned and dreamed. Then came the 
reality and with it " The Grandmother's 
Tragedy." 

I found out, as Eliza Storrs found 
out, and as so many women of my gen- 
eration have found out, that I wasn't 
to have anything, — neither pleasure nor 
responsibility. My empty, expectant 
arms were to remain empty. Jane's 
idea and the nurse's idea of a grand- 
mother were negative ; indeed, a grand- 
mother was something to be guarded 

against. There was no room for a 

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grandmother in the routine of Roger's 
little life. So I remained an outsider, 
a spectator, and a spectator who was 
watched to see that she didn't make 
herself intrusive, — did n't, with her im- 
portunate affection, make an inroad on 
the rules laid down for the baby. 

I 'm afraid I took it a little hard. It was 
such a disappointing way of setting out 
on one's career of grandparent, so dif- 
ferent from that I had looked forward 
to with such eagerness. There is some- 
thing so heartbreaking in feeling full 
of love, and then having your affec- 
tion set aside gently but definitely as 
something nobody wanted. Besides 
that, I worried about the baby. How 
many times during those three weeks 
I echoed EHza Storrs, — "Mark my 

words, that child's head will be as flat 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



as a pancake." I longed to take him up, 
but actually did n't dare, though he was 
my own grandchild ! While Jane was 
perfectly polite about it, she was as ner- 
vous as any old hen when I was near the 
baby. The reason she gave for leaving 
him on his back hours at a time was that 
it made a child nervous to be disturbed, 
and that a child, anyway, was not a 
plaything. 

"Perhaps," Ellery suggested once, 
" he likes to be played with." 

" We should n't consider what a child 
likes ^'* Jane remonstrated, and I was 
sure she was quoting from a medical 
book. " We should only think what is 
for his good ! " 

So, though Roger would crow at me 

in the most beguiling way, Jane or the 

nurse was always on hand to see that 

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we never had a word in private to- 
gether. 

It was hard work learning to be that 
kind of a grandmother ; to my way of 
thinking it was being no grandmother 
at all. But the time came when I proved 
my right to love Roger in my own way. 
The nurse was off for an afternoon, 
and the baby began to cry. At first a 
little whimper, then a good loud roar. 
From the first moment it was evident 
to me he had an attack of colic. Jane 
did n't go to him at once, but continued 
to sew calmly. Presently she moved him 
over on his side and gave him a little 
cold water, but he kept on yelling, of 
course. Jane got up and walked the 
floor. Then, before my very eyes, she 
got down a book about babies, and read 

in it what to do ; I would n't have be- 

166 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



lieved it if I had n't seen it for myself. 
She did n't find the right place, or else 
she could n't put her mind on it, for at 
last she wailed out : — 

" Oh, what do you think is the matter ? 
Oh, what do you think I ought to do ? " 

" I think you had better take him up, 
Jane," I said gently. I was very sorry 
for Jane ; her outside shell of assurance 
and know - it - all was, after all, only a 
mask behind which a poor, inexperi- 
enced little mother lurked trembling. 
" Take him up and lay him on his 
stomach over a hot-water bottle. He 's 
got a little attack of colic." 

" Thank God ! " said Jane. " I thought 
he might be going to have a convul- 
sion! " 

She was pale as a sheet, so I did it for 

her. I whisked him up, and comforted 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



him just as if it had been only yester- 
day I had had my babies to look af- 
ter. Jane watched me respectfully. She 
always lifted Eoger warily as if she 
were afraid he would break. After that, 
discipline was relaxed. I had come into 
my own. 

Hard as I thought my first experi- 
ence was, I have learned since that it is 
nothing to the humiliation some grand- 
mothers have undergone. I have heard 
of some who have been treated as if 
they were contagious diseases, and by 
their own daughters ! I hope there are 
not many such ; it is too sad a way of 
being cheated out of one's birthright. 
There would be fewer young mothers, 
I think, who mistook colic for convul- 
sions, and looked up in books what it 

was their babies were crying about, if 

168 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



the younger generation had n't such a 
contempt for our old - fashioned ways. 
Germs are at the bottom of that con- 
tempt, though young mothers are learn- 
ing daily that there is more to being a 
mother than in having the bottles well 
sterilized. 

I for one protest against the " Thou 
shalt nots" that are written down for 
grandmothers. They will, of course, 
pass the way of many of the other use- 
less " Thou shalt nots." But what good 
will that do my generation ? We shall 
have been defrauded of some of our 
rights as grandmothers, and our grand- 
children will have been defrauded with 
us. There are some things I hold to be 
the right of all children from the very 
moment they are born, and one is the 
right of being spoiled by their grand- 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



parents ; hand in hand with that goes 
the right of a grandmother to spoil 
them. 

Age lops off our interest in one thing, 
then another. Year by year absence and 
death thin the number of our friends. 
Be our children never so devoted and 
loving, there always have been and there 
always will be days that have long arid 
places in them for people who have 
traveled far in the Land of Old Age. 
It is no one's fault. It is a part of hfe, 
no more to be complained of than the 
loss of the suppleness of youth. The 
Land of Old Age has sparsely peopled 
districts. Shadows move about under 
the shade of trees ; they are the shadows 
of the people we used to love. Some- 
times as we sit dozing in its tranquillity 

we hear sounds of footsteps that make 

170 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



our hearts beat ; the sound of dear voices 

comes to us, and then we wake up ; they 

are only the dear echoes from the past, 

the reflections of the things that were. 

"We know that never this side of the 

Great Silence shall we hear them with 

our waking ears. 

Then to us, sitting lonely and silent, 

come the voices of little children ; living 

children, and not shadows that vanish 

if we dare to look at them full in the 

face. They are our children's children, 

and all at once the silent country wakes 

up to life. We know now why the Land 

of Old Age is so still and empty. It is 

60 that the children may find plenty of 

room there to play. To me, in all the 

Land of Old Age there is no dearer 

sight than those old people you see with 

little children around them. Sometimes 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



it is an old man taking his little grand- 
daughter out to feed the hens, or again 
an old woman sitting happily, a little 
sleeping child in her arms. Do not dis- 
turb her, for she had gone back years 
and years, back to her own youth, and 
she is dreaming that she has her own 
baby in her arms. 

In the Land of Old Age how many 
songs are sung every day to little chil- 
dren by lips that had forgotten how to 
sing, for, oh, so many years! There 
comes trooping to you a gay little pro- 
cession of stories and games ; they 
stand around you clamoring to be told 
and sung and played for your grand- 
children. They talk about children being 
spoiled nowadays, — what with mechan- 
ical toys and all ; I am sure that it is 

in the homes where there are no grand- 

172 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



mothers to cut paper dolls or teach how 
to make reins on a spool-and-pin knit- 
ting-machine. My little grandsons push 
spools around the room, playing they 
are automobiles, instead of chu-chu cars. 
Only last week I was called upon to 
make equipment for so recent a thing 
as the Spanish War. My boys fought 
the British, but I made the paper hats 
of just the same pattern for both gener- 
ations ; the swords which I forged were 
of two pieces of wood craftily tied to- 
gether by string. My grandfather taught 
me how when I was a little girl. 

One day soon after I had won my 
right to be a grandmother, I was sitting 
with Roger in my lap, singing him one 
of the baby things one croons without 
knowing what it is. 

All at once I began to listen to my- 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



self sing, with a certain surprise, as if 

to some one else, and these were the 

foolish words I sang : — 

" The craw and the poosie-o ! 
The craw and the poosie-o ! 
The muckle cat got up an graat 
On the top of Grannie's hoosie-o." 

I had n't thought of it for years, not 
since I sang it to my own babies. My 
mother had sung it to me, and her 
mother to her, because back, who knows 
how long ago, we had a Scottish grand- 
mother. Xow all the memory of her 
that there is, is this old nursery 
rhyme, which has survived mysteriously 
through the changing generations. I 
smiled with a certain triumph to think 
that the women of our family would 
sing " The craw and the poosie-o " to 
their babies when all Jane's "Thou 
shalt nots " had been forgotten. 



CHAPTER IX 

YOUNG PEOPLE AND OLD 

The mothers of the little children do 
well to let them stay with their grand- 
parents while they will, for soon enough 
they grow up. 

There are always the ghosts of little 
children near older people, which teach 
them to understand the hearts of those 
other little children whom they meet 
in the real world. The grown-up chil- 
dren are so much harder to understand. 
They fill me with such a sense of igno- 
rance, for they know so many things 
which I once knew and have forgotten. 
Indeed, almost the whole tissue of their 
lives is made up of these things. 

I do not know why I remember my 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



girlhood so little, but I find that I am 
not alone in this. When I pin down my 
contemporaries, they have the same 
lapses of memory that I have myself. 
Perhaps it is because the serious things 
of life overshadow this time; marriage 
and children follow so closely on the 
heels of girlhood ; one discovers so 
soon that so many of the things one 
has learned and almost all one has 
thought and dreamed have no place in 
the real world. So little, indeed, do I 
remember of this part of my life that 
I sometimes feel as if I had been mar- 
ried ever since I was a child in short 
dresses. 

I find as I turn over the pages of the 
past — and so many of them are oblit- 
erated or contain only stray sentences 

of unrelated stories — that I can re- 

176 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



member more about the way I felt when 
I was a yerj little girl than when I was 
a big one. Of the things that happened 
when I was at the young-lady age I 
remember so little : a dress, a party, a 
few faces, a confession of some fault 
that I was afraid to make to my mother. 
And when I finally came to her, after 
losing sleep, she took what I had to 
tell her — and I don't remember what 
it was — in a very disappointing, com- 
mon-place way. 

" Well, well," said she, " I suppose 
every girl is bound to make a fool of 
herself first or last, and I ought n't to 
expect you '11 escape, my dear. Let 's 
not discuss it further ! " 

I think my mother prolonged her 
life by refusing to discuss unpleasant 
things further. 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



Lately I have often run through these 
especial pages of my life, because it is 
only recently that I have realized what 
a gulf separates us older people from 
the younger ones. Perhaps all older 
women do not feel as I do, or perhaps 
they do not think about it at all, and im- 
agine contentedly, as I did before Ger- 
trude came on a visit, that because they 
love young people they know all about 
them. 

Gertrude is my great-niece; she is 

spending her Easter vacation with us, 

and she is a sophomore in college. She 

is pretty, as are her charming clothes; 

she looks one straight in the eyes when 

she talks, — hers are clear gray and 

have as much expression as those of a 

robin ; and though it is plain to be seen 

that none of the things which make a 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



woman of one have touched her, she 
has a calm assurance of bearing that 
comes from perfect health. Health, in- 
deed, shines out of her; her vitality 
seems a force, and an almost overpow- 
ering one. In her presence I feel my- 
self small and shrunken of body. She 
is the kind of capable modern girl who 
knows how to make a parent mind, and 
so compelling a quality is the serene 
assurance of youth that I felt, as I sat 
there beside Eliza Storrs, that, had 
Gertrude been my daughter, I would 
never have dared to face her with that 
last year's plumage on my hat. 

My own children and I have grown 
up — I had almost said grown old — 
together, and Margaret, while she may 
scold me about my hat, will under- 
stand ; but to Gertrude it will seem 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



mere wanton dowdiness, a sign of age 
something akin to the losing of one's 
faculties. This is because we have no 
means of communication, as I found 
out, to my surprise, when Gertrude 
first arrived. 

" How is your dear mother ? " I 
asked. 

Gertrude told me, and then said that 
they were all so glad at home that my 
health was so much better than it had 
been the winter before. I asked her 
next how she liked college, and she re- 
plied she found it " broadening," and 
then I asked her what her studies were. 
I saw a little shadow of amusement 
cross her face ; and though she an- 
swered me with polite exactness, I 
realized with chagrin that I had made 

a mistake. I felt intellectually all el- 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



bows and feet, — they do not call them 
" studies " any more ; young women 
of Gertrude's age speak about their 
" work " instead. 

I find, as we grow old, we often re- 
peat the experiences of our youth. As 
the world runs from me and I become 
less sure of my ground, I now and then 
have moments of extreme embarrass- 
ment in the presence of younger peo- 
ple — when my memory slips a cog, for 
instance, or when I find I have repeated 
the same thing twice — that is like no- 
thing I have felt since when, as a little 
girl, I did things that made me long 
for the kindly earth to open and swal- 
low me. The only difference is that now 
I can laugh off my mortification, and 
then I used to wash it away with tears. 

After I had asked Gertrude about 
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her studies and she had answered, we 
seemed to have finished definitely and 
for all time everything we had to say 
to each other. We looked at each other 
kindly, even with a certain affection, 
but, nevertheless, conversation lan- 
guished and died. 

" Gertrude is a lovely girl, is n't 
she ? " Margaret said to me later. 
" And 60 responsive ! " — I had heard 
the two chattering away like a couple 
of magpies. 

" Gertrude and I don't speak the 
same language," I answered, " though 
we're both tolerably proficient in the 
English tongue when we're not to- 
gether." 

" Not many young girls come to the 
house; perhaps that 's the reason," sug- 
gested Margaret. 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



" I 'm sure," I replied, " I see a great 
deal of young people." For, you see, I 
thought it was all Gertrude's fault. 

"A great deal of young people about 
thirty," said Margaret. 

As I thought of my young friends, 
I found that Margaret was right ; that 
while I had been asleep one night all 
my httle girls that I was so proud of 
keeping in touch with had grown to be 
women " about thirty." 

Since Gertrude came there have been 
plenty of real young people around the 
house. Margaret made a tea for her 
right away, and I had a chance to see 
the young people of my town, many 
of whom I am ready to take my oath 
were babies no later than day before 
yesterday, and I confess I still thought 
of them as babies. It is a long time 

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since I have recognized all the girls 
who bow to me on the street, for I am 
absent-minded, anyway. Now I am be- 
ginning to place a few of them. The 
pretty girl with curls is Laura Dickin- 
son. I remember her at ten as an ac- 
tive pair of dividers careering over the 
earth's surface ; I never saw a child 
with such thin, lively legs. The young 
man who pays Gertrude especial court 
is John Baker. I remember very well 
going to see him four days after he 
was born. He was Sarah Baker's first 
grandchild, and she was inordinately 
proud of him. After that, the last defi- 
nite recollection I have of him is the 
time, when, at the age of five, he broke 
my china jar and yelled loudly with de- 
spair over what he had done. As they 

were named to me there was not one I 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



did not recall as a baby, and very few 
that I hadn't taken for their older 
brothers and sisters. 

How had they accomplished the pro- 
cess of growing up so fast, and where 
had they been when they were about 
it? That was the first thing that struck 
me. The next was how venerable I 
seemed to them. I am, as I have had 
occasion to mention before, what the 
people around here term a " mighty 
spry old lady," and noways infirm; but 
these children cannot remember a day 
when I was not old; they do not go 
back to the time when my hair was not 
already gray, and they give me the re- 
spect due to age. No one need tell me 
that among well-born young people the 
respect for the old is dead. These dear 

children fairly bristle with respect for 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



me. If I come into the room where 
they are, they are full of charming little 
attentions in the way of easy -chairs, 
cushions, and footstools. Personally, I 
dislike soft-padded chairs. I was taught 
to sit upright as a girl, and I still sit 
so, my backbone being as strong as 
ever. I am never more uncomfortable 
than when I have several cushions 
tucked about me, but often of late 
years I have had to sit arranged in 
this modern way or seem ungracious. If 
women of Margaret's age frequently 
force sofa pillows on me, those of Ger- 
trude's can hardly wait to say " good- 
afternoon " before they pop one behind 
me ; old ladies and sofa cushions are in 
their minds inseparable. 

The other day my old friend Eliza 

Storrs and I were coming home to- 

186 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



gether in the electrics from Standish. 
We had been on quite a jaunt together; 
in fact, we had been to help each other 
buy our new bonnets. We had had a 
good time doing it, and came home 
with that feeling of guilty triumph that 
sweetened the disapproval which we 
knew was before us. 

" I suppose," EHza admitted to me, 
^' that I shall never hear the last of it. 
Buty^^ she added, with brisk decision 
that was a sort of dress rehearsal of 
the tone in which she would later say 
the same thing to her daughter, — '' hut 
there's no use talking about it now. 
I've been to Standish and seen about 
my hat, and I 'm going again ! " 

Her tone had a triumphant trumpet- 
ing quality to it. The truth of the mat- 
ter was, Eliza had merely had three 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



new flowers and some foliage put in 
her last year's bonnet; it had, further- 
more, passed through the ambiguous 
process known as " freshening up." For 
my part, while I had indeed bought a 
new hat, the trimming on my old one 
being as good as new, I had used it 
over again. It had been more expen- 
sive in the beginning than I had in- 
tended to get; my daughter Margaret 
was with me when I got it, and over- 
persuaded me. So I, by using the last 
year's trimming and Eliza Storrs her 
last year's hat, had the feeling deep 
down in our hearts that we had out- 
witted our wise children, who are al- 
ways trying to make us put more ex- 
pensive things on our backs and heads 
than there is any need for. I think that 

older women often have the same guilty 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



joy, in spending less on themselves than 
they should, that young women do in 
being extravagant. 

So, borne up by the feeling that is 
as exhilarating for a woman of seventy 
as for one of twenty-seven, — that of 
having done something she should not, 
— Eliza and I climbed into the electric 
car as light of foot as our years per- 
mitted. The car was full ; we had barely 
entered it when two young girls, after 
giving each other a brief glance, sprang 
to their feet and hustled us into their 
seats. This kind act was accomplished 
promptly and thoroughly, and I would 
not for one moment be so ungracious 
as to give the impression that I was 
not grateful, nor would I for a moment 
undervalue the small kindnesses that 

the young so often shower on the old. 

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It was not their fault that the laughter 
died out of our eyes, and that our 
spirits flagged, and that even the tri- 
umph of having achieved a last year's 
hat seemed less amusing than it had a 
moment ago, while our young friends 
chattered as blithely, swaying to and 
fro as they held on to the straps, as 
they had before they gave us our 
seats. 

You see, Eliza and I had taken a lit- 
tle vacation away from the Land of Old 
Age, — for there is nothing so rejuve- 
nating as playing truant, and our day's 
excursion had been that, — and these 
young girls who had risen so promptly 
to give us their seats had led us back 
to our place in the world. We had for- 
gotten for a moment that we belonged 

to the white-haired company who have 

190 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



won their right to a perpetual seat in 
the cars, and however welcome a seat 
may be, it is not so pleasant always to 
remember why it is our right. 

I sat there watching them, and at 
last I asked Eliza : — 

"What do you suppose they are 
talking about ? " 

" Something foolish," Eliza replied, 
without hesitation. " The way girls go 
on nowadays ! When I was young, 
children and young people were sup- 
posed to let their elders do the talk- 
ing, and now it 's the young folks who 
do all the talking. I declare I some- 
times feel as if I never had a chance 
to speak." 

" Oh, come now, Eliza," said I. " You 

can't tell me that you 've passed your 

life in a state of dumbness." 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



For Eliza has done her share of talk- 
ing in this life. 

I have known Eliza since we were 
schoolgirls together, and I tried to re- 
member any concrete conversation that 
we had, as girls, in our endless gossip- 
ing together, and I found I couldn't. 

Throughout the ride the young girls 
did n't stop their talk for one moment, 
and went down the street still chatting, 
while I tried to piece out from the 
shreds my memory gave me the fabric 
of their conversation. 

" Eliza," I said, " does it ever make 
you feel old when girls hop out of their 
seats in cars the minute they clap eyes 
on you ? " 

"Sometimes," Eliza admitted. "But," 

she added with decision, " it would make 

me feel a great deal older if I had had 

192 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



to stand on my two feet all the way 
home from Standish ! " 

But while I might not wish to stand 
so long, I would gladly do without some 
of the small attentions by which I am 
fairly snowed under the moment I come 
among them. And this is not the only 
thing that happens when I appear. Con- 
versation stops. They go on talking, to 
be sure, but I know they are talking 
with me for an audience, and that they 
expurgate their talk as they go along, 
just as older people's talk insensibly 
changes when a child of twelve joins 
them; just as I have weeded my talk 
a hundred times out of respect to the 
young, these dear children weed their 
talk from respect to the old. I am 
aware that they have a very vivid idea 

of what I think the conduct and con- 

193 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



versation of young people ought to be, 
and as far as they can they instinctively 
conform to it — when I am around. It 
is taken for granted not only by these 
very young people, but by my older 
young friends my daughter's age, that 
by virtue of my years I am a conserva- 
tive, and that I am deeply pained by 
certain phases of modern life. It is true 
that I should not like to see a woman 
smoke, and I wish that young girls were 
less slangy and noisy on the street; but 
I realize that each generation will have 
phases which seem unlovely to the older 
generation. So, while I may have opin- 
ions of my own at variance with those 
of the present day, I am not as hope- 
lessly conservative as I seem in the 
presence of Gertrude and her friends. 

I would be glad for the courage to tell 

194 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



them that I would rather be shocked 
than have this well-meant little farce 
played for me, but this I shall never 
dare, for I shall never know them well 
enough. 

Perhaps it is the fault of us older 
women that the young people are so 
careful of our feelings. It must be that 
we have ourselves put so much dis- 
tance between us and them. There are 
some of us who are too eager to tell 
how well-behaved we were when we 
were young; who have too much to 
say about the slovenly ways young peo- 
ple have of standing and sitting, and 
of their slangy ways of speaking, for 
us to meet them often on a comfortable 
footing. We older women have less 
criticism for the younger ones than 
older women had formerly, I think. I 

195 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



fancy that to-day our attitude is one 
easier to get on with. I don't believe I 
hear so much about girls being " giddy " 
as I used to when I was a young girl. So 
perhaps by the time Gertrude is an old 
woman the young people of her day 
won't be as afraid of saying something 
she will disapprove of as she is. Still, 
if she is one of those of us who don't 
take' everything for granted, she will 
find the way back to her girlhood a 
long one. 

One does n't need to reach the Land 
of Old Age to smile over the things 
that caused one's despair when one was 
Gertrude's age ; so it is n't to be won- 
dered at that the dust of years obliter- 
ates all trace of the things we laughed 
over and cried over so long ago. And 

yet, while I know that the things that 

196 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



seem important to Gertrude seem un- 
important to me, and will be unimpor- 
tant to her five years from now, by 
virtue of her youth and health she can 
make me feel my years. She can set 
me wondering about the girl I once 
was, and I sometimes have a vague 
shame that I remember so little. 

When I look at the young girls chat- 
tering in the street, I can only wonder 
about what they are talking; I knew 
once, now I have forgotten, and there 
is nothing that can make me remember. 
If Gertrude lived here, we should get 
to be very good friends, and in spite 
of the mutual embarrassment we now 
cause each other, we should find a va- 
riety of things to say to each other, 
plenty of common ground on which to 
meet. Then, too, every day Gertrude 

197 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



would be growing older, she would be 
coming nearer to my point of view, and 
very soon we should come to under- 
stand each other, — and I should wake 
up to find that Gertrude was thirty and 
married, with a couple of babies. 



CHAPTER X 

UNSPOKEN WORDS 

A.S soon as a young girl marries and 
turns into a mother, then there is that 
in the hearts of all of us older women 
which speaks to her, for among the 
most poignant things in our memories 
is the love that we bore our little chil- 
dren and the mistakes we made in the 
rearing of them. 

There is a great pathos to me in the 
young mothers who try so earnestly to 
do what is best ; for, however we bring 
up our children, we are sure to make 
irreparable mistakes, and as we old 
people look back over the long road we 
have traveled, we see that it has been 

watered by the needless tears we have 

199 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



shed, and worse still, those we have 

made our children shed because of our 

needless severities. Whether we were 

firm or whether we were lenient, we 

are sure to regret the course we took ; 

for there is no mother living who at 

the end of her life would bring up her 

children over again in the same way, 

nor one who does not believe in her 

heart that she could do better a second 

time. 

We have realized how futile our own 

theories of "governing children" are, 

and that there is very little mothers can 

do for their children besides trying 

humbly to understand them and to avoid 

injustices. I don't think it is possible 

for any mother to do more, but it is 

possible to do a great deal less. So 

those of us who have gotten to a place 

200 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



where certain parental firmnesses seem 
tyranny, and certain sorts of discipline 
cruelty, would be glad to have their 
daughters learn this before it is too 
late. 

I remember so vividly a recent strug- 
gle Margaret had with Betty that was 
so like one of those I had with her. 
Betty and I were sitting together on 
the piazza. We were singing. I take solid 
comfort singing with Betty, for as I grow 
older I find it very pleasant to have 
some one in the world who does n't no- 
tice how thin and wavering my notes 
are, and who likes to listen to my voice, 
worn as it is. Presently Margaret joined 
us. 

" Mother," Betty asked, " may I go 
down to Annie's house — " 

" No ; I can't let you go to-day," 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



interrupted Margaret ; and though she 
spoke gently, her answer came with such 
promptness I knew Betty's question 
was a cue she had been waiting for. 

"Why not?" came Betty's Httle 
whine — that sad Httle "Why not?" 
that every mother of us knows so well. 

"Because you didn't come home 
when I told you to yesterday." 

" But I told Annie I 'd come — " 

" Well, I tell you you can't," replied 
my daughter cheerfully. 

You know what happened then, don't 
you ? There were tears and teasing. 
Margaret was firm. Betty was persist- 
ent. Margaret told Betty to stop crying 
and Betty cried the harder. I gathered 
through her sobs that there was to have 
been lemonade. As Margaret still re- 
fused, Betty grew defiant. I opened 

202 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



my mouth to say something, and then 
decided not to. If all the words, for 
only one day, which a mother of my 
generation does nH say to her middle- 
aged children, were gathered together, 
they would make instructive read- 
ing. 

At last Margaret led Betty away, 
saying gently, " Dear, I only keep you 
in because I must"; and then she 
ended with a reproachful, " Oh, why 
do you make me punish you ? " Which 
was her way of saying the old " It 
hurts me more than it does you." 

Soon Margaret came back and sat 
down by me. "We could hear Betty 
sobbing upstairs. 

" The worst of it is," said Margaret, 

"she thinks I'm unjust." 

"We rocked back and forth, and for 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



a while neither of us spoke. Little 
wandering airs blew the long trailing 
vine of the creeper to and fro. We 
presented to the passers-by the same 
spectacle of peace that Betty and I 
had a few moments before. But we 
two knew how changed things were, 
for the only sound in the world that we 
heard was that persistent, angry sob- 
bing upstairs. I knew that Margaret's 
heart was wrung with it, and I suf- 
fered with her, for Margaret is my 
baby, and very mercifully we cannot 
suffer for our grandchildren's tears, or 
any other tears, for that matter, as we 
do for those of our own children. 

Besides, while I was sorry for Betty, 
— and I will tell you privately that my 
sympathies were with her, though I 

wouldn't have confessed it to Marga- 

204 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



ret, — I was glad to see the little thing 
show so much spirit. She was protest- 
ing with all her strength against what 
seemed to her injustice and the abuse 
of power; — and you can feel these 
things with as great indignation as any 
one, even though you are not old 
enough to call them by their names. 
And so, though I hate to hear a child 
cry, if it had n't been for Margaret's 
distressed face, I should have had a 
certain satisfaction in hearing Betty's 
indignant roars. 

As a baby Betty was too good. Mar- 
garet brought her up in the modern, 
cast-iron, systematic way, and her sub- 
dued whimpers of useless protest went 
to my heart; I used to find myself wish- 
ing she would have a good old-fash- 
ioned fit of crying, with yells that one 

205 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



could hear across the street. So it was 
a relief, as Betty grew older, to have 
her show a normal amount of strong 
will, although Margaret has been as per- 
plexed as if the nursery clock had up 
and defied her. I have never dared tell 
Margaret how I felt about this, for 
there is nothing that irritates a mother 
of the present generation more than to 
have her own mother give her advice 
concerning the rearing of children, 
however much experience she may have 
had. Like most grandmothers of to-day, 
I have wisely held my tongue, though 
sometimes it has been hard work not to 
speak. 

Margaret was learning that while 
you may make rules for a baby, there 
is no set of rules made by man that 
will apply to a child of six, for Betty 

206 



AN" ELDERLY WOMAN 



continued to sob defiantly. At last 
Margaret said : — 

^^I have to make her mind, you 
know." 

I nodded. 

" She must learn to keep her prom- 
ises." 

"Of course," I assented. Poor girl, 
I knew she was making apologies to 
herself for causing Betty unhappiness. 

"If I had known she cared so 
much — " 

I nodded again. I knew so well what 
she felt. I also knew what I would do 
if I were in her place ; because one is a 
mother is no reason why one should n't 
retire gracefully from a false position. 

"But now I can't, of course — " she 

concluded firmly. 

Again I outwardly agreed, — this 
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is one of the arts one acquires with 
years, — but what I wanted to say 
was: — 

"Why not? Why can't you give 
in?" 

One of the tenets of the governing 
of children is that when you have made 
a mistake, have given a too heavy pun- 
ishment or imposed a command that is 
more distasteful than you dreamed it 
would be, you must persist in the mat- 
ter to the end. We deal this way with 
our children, little and big, and unrea- 
sonable obstinacy is called "being 
firm." Why we feel we must act this 
way, I don't know. I have never known, 
even when I was most " firm " myself, 
and I don't believe any one else does. 
I 'm sure Margaret did n't. We were 

silent again. 

20.8 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



" If one could only know what one 
ought to do. Oh, it's so hard to know 
what 's right ! " sighed my poor daugh- 
ter at last. 

In the past half -hour she had gone 
over the weary path every mother must 
travel so often. We mete out to our 
children what seems like justice, but 
justice turns its back on us and leaves us 
stranded with a child who is crying its 
eyes out because it is unjustly treated. 
As Margaret said, — " It is so hard to 
know what is right." 

So old women who see their little 
grandchildren playing about them can- 
not help but think of their own lost 
babies. Out of the past our little chil- 
dren look at us, and as our eyes meet 
theirs we falter: — 

"My child, I did the best I knew." 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



" Yes, mother." — Then, " Mother, 
do you remember the time you laughed 
at me, and because I got angry you 
punished me?" 

You say meekly : — 

" I was rude that time, and then un- 
just, dear." 

"Mother, do you remember — " 

But you can't bear to listen. You 

know how many times you didn't do 

your best; the times you were gentle 

because you were too cowardly to 

fight; the times when you punished 

without understanding; the times when 

you imposed too heavy penalties for 

childish faults — for, after all, you 

were no better mother than you were 

woman; and so you change your boast 

of having done your best to : — 

"My child, I loved you dearly al- 
210 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN^ 



ways — through your mistakes and 
through mine." 

That is the most that any mother of 
us can say. As we grow old, we are 
very apt to return in spirit to the days 
when our children were our very own, 
and wonder we did n't treasure them 
more. We find out, as we get along in 
years, that we could have been just as 
good mothers with fewer tears shed. 

I cannot bear to think how I made 

Margaret and Helen sleep on little 

hard nubbins of curl-papers so they 

might have fluffy curls the next day, — - 

curls were the fashion then, and my 

children had hair as straight as a string. 

I hate to remember how I forced them 

to eat the things they didn't want to. 

I had a long battle with Helen over 

soft-boiled eggs; she would not eat 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



them. ISTo one was benefited by my 
persistence, nor could possibly have 
been, whichever way the battle came 
out ; it was of no importance either way ; 
but I made the whole household un- 
comfortable with the conflict. I didn't 
believe, in those days, in " humoring 
children about their food." Dear me! 
How many needless tears I made that 
child shed, and how unhappy I was 
over it! I thought eggs were for 
Helen's good, and I was bound she 
should eat them. I am glad to remem- 
ber that in the end she won, and I can 
only look back and wonder at myself 
for my foolish persistence. 

I sometimes wake up in the night 
and think over some of the little un- 
kindnesses I did Margaret, or some 

coveted pleasure I denied my children 

212 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



because it was too much trouble to let 
them do as they wanted, and I have 
the same bitter regret over these things, 
small though they seemed at the time, 
that I might have had if I had lost my 
babies through death instead of losing 
them only by having them grow up 
into men and women. Every older 
woman has a sad little collection of 
such memories. They are among the 
few sad things one carries with one to 
the end of life, for age does not make 
us forget our injustices towards our 
httle children. "We remember them al- 
ways, and time, instead of softening 
them, makes them grow worse. Inci- 
dents that in youth seemed of little im- 
portance look very much hke cruelties 
when we look at them from the Land 
of Old Age. 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



So I was glad when Margaret could 
stand it no longer and went upstairs to 
Betty. As she went into the room, the 
child burst into a fresh storm of tears. 
Margaret tried tenderly to calm her ; 
but it was freedom or nothing for Betty. 

So Margaret said things like : " You 
know you never get things by crying 
for them. — Betty ! If you speak so to 
me I shall have to punish you severely ! " 

She came downstairs again with a 

firm line around her mouth. I knew just 

how she felt. She had gone into battle, 

and she intended to fight it out to the 

end, — whether it was good for Betty 

or not. I looked at Margaret and I 

felt that time had gone backward, and 

that Margaret was myself and Betty 

one of my own children, while I myself 

was some invisible outsider watching 

214 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



the same old conflict repeat itself. 
Most older women, as they watch their 
grown-up children, have this almost 
uncanny feeling of living over again 
their own mistakes and blunders. At 
such times one cannot help an obscure 
feeling of responsibility, as if somehow 
it were one's own fault, so much are 
your daughter's mistakes your very 
own ; at such times I cannot keep from 
trying to help, even though I know it 
is unwise, so I had to say at last : — 

" Don't you think you are making a 
great deal out of a small matter?" 

It was such a miserable way of wast- 
ing a bit of one's childhood and youth. 

" Disobedience is n't a small matter," 
replied Margaret shortly. 

" Carelessness is," I suggested. 

"She's a very obstinate child!" 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



Margaret asserted. By this time she 
had lost sight of the fact that it was 
the sense of injustice that made Betty 
obstinate. 

Then, as I started to say something 
more : — 

" Darhng," Margaret interrupted with 
awful patience, " I Ve got to fight this 
out myself. You're only making it 
harder for me." 

I had it on my lips to say : " It 
would be better for you if you allowed 
your mother to make a suggestion now 
and then ! " For no one likes to be 
asked to hold one's tongue, however 
politely, and above all by one's own 
child. But as I looked at Margaret's 
careworn young face, and saw her plod- 
ding along the iron path she called 

duty, — in this case, as in so many 

216 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



others, a path which led nowhere, — 
my httle flash of impatience died. 

But my spirit cried out to her though 
my lips did n't speak : — 

" Oh, my dear, it 's no matter at all ! 
Don't, don't feel so about it ! " 

Then I went away, leaving Margaret 
making her tragic mountain out of 
Betty's little molehill of carelessness ; 
remembering in my young days how 
warmly I sympathized with a friend 
of mine whose mother always interfered 
in the discipline of her little grandson. 
Whatever he had done, " How happy 
he was before you disturbed him ! " she 
would say, reproachfully. 

Now I understand. There are so 

many sorrows and cares which we 

must inevitably meet as we journey 

toward age, and so many perplexing 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



moments in life which we cannot avoid, 
that we want, oh, so much, that our 
children might at least be spared and 
spare themselves the unnecessary wor- 
ries. It is the useless mistakes and need- 
less suffering each generation under- 
goes that we of the older protest against, 
and for which we now and then break 
silence, only to learn again the bitter 
lesson of our uselessness. 



CHAPTEE XI 

THE ISOLATED GENERATION 

I COULD n't help Margaret that day in 

that one little thing any more than I 

have been able to help my children in 

the greater crises of life. I couldn't 

even imagine I was helping her; and 

this is one of the bitterest things we 

mothers have to bear when we get old. 

We have learned then that we can't 

help our children to lead their lives 

one bit better. There is not one single 

little stone we can clear from before 

their feet, be our old fingers ever so 

willing. With yearning hearts we see 

them making the mistakes we could 

teach them to avoid if only they would 

listen. We see them going through one 

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experience after another, — stumbling 
here ; again hurting themselves against 
the same corner you hurt yourself 
against so long ago; repeating all the 
world-worn mistakes, while we elders 
watch anxiously and may not even cry 
out, — " Take care ! " Our sons repeat 
the follies of their fathers; our daugh- 
ters make over again all the mistakes 
of their mothers. It is very hard to sit 
in silence when you see them doing all 
the things that you did and then so 
painfully learned better. We feel that 
we could so easily point to the fair 
open road if our children would let us, 
but we are as useless to them as guide- 
posts to the blind. We must watch our 
children lose themselves in the tangle 
whose miseries we know so well, and 

see them at last, after long years of 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



wandering, find their way back home, 
heart-sore and worn; — and all the time 
we can't help thinking it all needn't 
have been. That, to us older mothers, 
is the heart-rending part of it. Instead 
of helping, you must sit quiet and fold 
your hands, knowing that if you did 
speak they wouldn't hear you. Your 
children, however dearly they love you, 
will think you say what you do only 
because you are old and have forgot- 
ten, and therefore you cannot possibly 
understand life as they see and live it. 
If you run after your children crying, 
"Oh, my child, don't do this," they 
won't listen to you, or if they do they 
smile at you as if you were a child. 
They are so sure, these young people, 
they know more about life than you 
do! Or it may very well be that in- 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



stead of smiling, they have hard work 
not to show you how impatient they are 
that you have interfered in something 
you can't know about. 

The right of free speech with our 
children is one of the pleasures of life 
which age often takes from us. When 
they are young they listen, — they have 
to then, even if they go away and for- 
get; but as they get older, they don't 
often let us have the illusion that we 
are listened to. I have even known 
some mothers who were not allowed to 
talk at all about their children's in- 
terests. 

I have never understood the watch- 
ful irritation with which our grown 
children meet our suggestions concern- 
ing their affairs, for these are the 

things that lie nearest our hearts. Are 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



they afraid, I wonder, that we will for- 
get they are grown up? I grant it 
sometimes is hard to act as if one real- 
ized it. 

However this may be, there are very 
few grown people who can bear advice 
from their own mothers, even though 
they listen patiently to all the rest of 
the world. I remember I had the same 
curious intolerance for my mother's ad- 
vice, and now I am at a loss to account 
for my impatience. Did I fancy, I won- 
der, that my problems were so differ- 
ent from those she had solved during 
her long life? 

There are, after all, few mothers who 
have grown old in the service of their 
children who have not some little wis- 
dom ready to give. Some of us have 

learned a short road to peace; all of 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



us have learned something that would 
make life easier for the children we 
love, but out of the fullness of our 
knowledge and experience we can give 
away not so much as a crumb. That 
evening I almost envied Margaret her 
trying afternoon; she believed, for the 
moment anyway, that she was doing 
her Betty good. 

There is something very touching in 
the unreasonable expectation each gen- 
eration has for its children. Obedience, 
cheerfulness, self-control, punctuality, 
are only a few of the virtues every young 
mother starts out by expecting of her 
babies. It only shows the serene self- 
confidence the young have in making 
the next generation better than the last. 
For, mind you, every mother expects 

to do this herself, and it's a happy 

224 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN" 



time when you still have the illusion of 
power and still believe you can play 
Providence for your children, that you 
can bring them up very much as you 
choose ; when you still feel that every- 
thing depends on you, and that with 
your love for them you will be able to 
defend them, not only from the world 
but from themselves. And so for a very 
little while you can. Young mothers in 
their tender ignorance imagine that 
this will always be so. 

But very soon your children slip from 
between your fingers. They develop 
new traits that you don't understand and 
others you understand only too well, 
for like weeds your own faults come up 
and refuse to be rooted out, and you lie 
awake nights trying " to know what is 

right," still thinking that your child's 

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welfare is in your own hand, trying 
with your own little strength to combat 
faults that are as old as your race, that 
are part of you and your mother and 
her mother before you, and will be part 
of your children's children. I see my 
daughters going valiantly to work at 
this hopeless task, high in courage, full 
of confidence that their children shall 
be saved anyway. As they bring their 
children up, they often talk to me about 
their own childhood, — and very ten- 
derly point out the mistakes I made 
with them. I smile one of those inward 
smiles age knows so well, as I gather 
from their accent, more than from any- 
thing they say, that they hope to avoid 
all my errors ; and indeed that they 
think they have avoided a good many 

already. 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



I let them talk. The last time Henry 
was on a visit we talked of old times 
and old methods, and especially of the 
desultory education I gave Margaret. 
Henry is doing better in this respect, 
and my older granddaughters are on 
the road to becoming very learned 
young ladies. I only hope Henry is 
taking as much pains to make his girls 
stand up straight as I did with her. 
While we compared new educational 
methods with the faulty old ones, I 
could n't help saying to my daughter : 
'^ All I hope, dear, is that when you 're 
my age you will have as devoted a set 
of children." 

For when your children have dis- 
proved all your theories ; when none of 
your sons have taken up the professions 

you tried so hard to have them ; when 

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they have consulted their own wills in 
everything in life, their affection is the 
great recompense. If our children really 
love us and show us that they do, I 
think we may count that we have won 
in the game of life, and I would be glad 
to have my children realize this, and 
have it help them over the discourage- 
ment of those years after their children 
have apparently slipped from them al- 
together. 

When I was a young mother I believed, 
too, that I could be a Providence for 
my children. I beheved they had been 
given me to mould as I would, and the 
only limit of the influence I would have 
was the limit of my own strength and 
love. Then there came a time when I 
realized that every child on the street 

my child stopped to talk with had its 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



share in bringing up my sons and 
daughters. One week in school was 
enough to upset all the training of years. 
They learned faster from their friends, 
and more willingly, than ever they did 
from me, and it seemed to me then that 
they learned the things they ought n't 
to quickest of all. My well-brought-up 
little boys came from play talking loudly, 
making faces, playing the fool. Margaret 
would come home from a visit with a 
trunkf ul of affectations and an assort- 
ment of silly ideas, — how silly I knew 
very well, for I had had those same 
ideas and thrown them aside myself ; 
why I didn't get comfort out of the 
fact that I had outgrown these very 
things, and that they, too, would in 
time inevitably outgrow them, I don't 

know. It's a bad moment when one 

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realizes that the most shallow boy and 
girl can have an influence over your 
children greater than your own, and 
that some thoughtless ridicule from 
any one your sons admire is able to 
undo all your patient work. It was when 
I saw these things that I began to see 
that my place in my children's lives 
must be very much less than I had first 
supposed, but I only redoubled my ef- 
forts. By that time I was past the place 
when commands and punishments were 
very much used. I used all my tact 
and affection and diplomacy to make 
my children what I wanted them. 

As they grew older still, I found my 
ideals of what I wanted them modified 
and changed by what they were. How 
much I am responsible for what they 

are to-day I am at a loss to decide, but 

230 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



I do know that the boy next door has 
always had a more direct and appar- 
ently a stronger influence than I ever 
had. 

However philosophical I might be, 
however glibly I talked to myself about 
"heredity and environment," I felt 
deep down in my heart that I was re- 
sponsible, and I alone, for what my 
children were. How many hours I have 
spent — yes, and days and months — 
in wondering just how I had failed. I 
felt that I was responsible for every 
one of their faults, that with more wis- 
dom and more courage and more pa- 
tience everything might have been dif- 
ferent. 

I have always envied those women 

who can say, " Anna gets her obstinacy 

from her father's family," or, " George 

231 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



has the Crawford temper"; but per- 
haps they too feel, down deep in their 
hearts, that they are somehow to blame 
for whatever is wrong. I was already 
an old woman before I was able to free 
myself of my part of the burden of re- 
sponsibility, for in the end I realized 
that, after all, I could n't hold myself 
accountable for the things that hap- 
pened when they were away from me 
altogether. But always the torturing 
question remains with us mothers, "If 
I had done differently, could I have 
saved my daughter this unhappiness? 
If I had been firmer, could n't I have 
helped my son more ? " 

It makes no difference what good 
children you have or how well they have 
"turned out"; mothers still ask them- 
selves these questions, so heavily do the 

232 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



sins of their children weigh on them, 
even when they are not sins at all. I 
have always wondered why nothing 
has ever been said about the sins of 
the children being visited on the par- 
ents, for if our sins are visited on our 
children theirs are doubly hard for us 
to bear. After they have forgotten them 
we still remember, for we wonder al- 
ways if we might not have prevented 
them by greater wisdom. 

As one advances farther into the 
Land of Old Age, one sees more and 
more how isolated each generation is 
from the other. We begin, hke Marga- 
ret, playing Providence to our children. 
We end, like myself, a spectator at the 
drama of our children's lives. You will 
not be able to turn the tragedy into a 

comedy. You can only watch it, breath- 

233 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



less, no more able to stop the march of 
events than the little boy in the gallery 
who hisses the villain. If we mothers 
have helped at all, it is what we are, 
and not what we have taught, that has 
counted. Yet, though we older people 
know there is a gulf of time between 
our children and us that may not be 
bridged, we can't help trying to bridge 
it. 

If you are in the thick of the play of 
life, look around you and you will see 
the gray-headed spectators who have 
themselves stepped off the stage. They 
are the mothers and fathers of the 
players, and each one of them is mur- 
muring advice or encouragement to 
some dear child who never stops to 
listen. Some cry as they look on, and 

some laugh, and some sit proud and 

234 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



complacent, and in her heart each one 
of them knows that the words she re- 
peats so often are not heard. But they 
keep on, for deeper than the knowledge 
of their own uselessness is the feeling 
of responsibility. You must bear the 
sins of your children until you die, just 
as you have your silent part in their 
successes. You put them in the world 
and you feel that you must answer to 
yourself for what they are. 

Though each generation must work 
out its own salvation, we mothers can't 
reconcile ourselves to this knowledge. 
To our last days many of us go on 
persisting in the belief that we could 
help our grown-up children if they 
would only stop long enough to listen. 

In spite of myself, I beheve this. I 

can't help it, and I like to think that 

235 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



they listen more than either of us 
knows, and that because they love me 
80 dearly, they hear, after all, the 
things I don't speak out loud. So at 
the end of life I can only say to my- 
self what I wanted to say to Marga- 
ret: Each one of us can help her chil- 
dren, she her small ones and I my big 
ones, only by loving them dearly and 
trying humbly to understand ; for I be- 
lieve that only in this way can one 
generation come near to the other. 



CHAPTEE XII 

LENGTHENING SHADOWS 

I HAVE spoken of us older people 
as spectators at the play of life, speak- 
ing words of encouragement which 
were not heard ; and if we speak words 
that are not heard, so are our ears al- 
most always on the alert to catch the 
inner meaning of our children's lives, 
to enter in and understand all the de- 
tails that are kept from us. 

I have a son whom I have seen but 
few times in many years ; he lives in a 
distant country and can seldom come 
home. I have pictures of the house in 
which he lives. Often his face shines 
out to me familiarly from a strange 

group of people, none of whose faces I 

237 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



know. Often it will be a little snap- 
shot, and from the looks and gestures 
arrested in the photograph, I will see 
that they are friends of his. Once in a 
while word comes that " this is So-and- 
So, you know," or that " the lady be- 
side me is Miss This or Miss That," 
— nothing more. I am familiar with all 
the outer surfaces of his life, as though 
I had lived out there with him. Every 
morning and evening when I pray for 
my children I go, it seems to me, al- 
most bodily out toward him in that 
inner communion that we must feel 
when we pray intensely for those whom 
we love. In all the years of our sepa- 
ration no woman has had a more faith- 
ful child. Week after week his letters 
come — full letters, too ; I follow him in 

his small journeys, in his comings and 

238 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



goings. I hear the old man and wife 
talk, that have done for him for so 
long, and to whose quaint picturesque- 
ness he never becomes accustomed be- 
yond the point of appreciation. I know 
his tastes and his pleasures and his 
recreations. I know that materially he 
is doing well, but of his inner life, of 
his defeats, of his triumphs, of his tra- 
vail in the stuff of his own character, 
I know nothing except what any one 
might know, — that he is a good fel- 
low, sweet-tempered, as he always was, 
and that he has a certain touch of ar- 
rogance, of kind-hearted authority in 
his air that is not unlike Dudley's. 
Any one might know this who saw his 
picture or who heard him spoken of. 
But he might be going through the 
crisis of his life even, with his spirit 

239 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



in deep distress, and I am sure he 
would sit down, from force of habit, 
and write me one of his chatty and en- 
tertaining letters that make up a part 
of my life. If he is ill, you may be sure 
I hear nothing of it until he is better. 
Since he cannot be with me in body 
it should be enough for me, I suppose, 
that he is in spirit with me enough so 
that he turns to me and gives me so 
much of his time. Yet it is not enough; 
it leaves me hungry. I never read one 
of his kind and charming letters without 
wondering; "Is all well with you, my 
son ? Is life kind to you ? Are your days 
lonely ? Does the lack of wife and chil- 
dren press heavily upon you, or is the 
crust of selfishness settling over you so 
that you would not sell your small free- 
dom of personal habits for the great 

240 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



gift of love which wife and children 

would give you? Is the bhght of middle 

age creeping upon you, swallowing up 

the generosities of your youth that I 

knew so well ? Or is your heart hungry 

for those children that you have never 

had, and is there some face dear to you 

beyond all others, so for want of it you 

must lead your life lonely as you do 

now ? " These questions have never been 

answered for me, nor will they be ever. 

Yet sometimes it seems to me that I 

know as much of him as I do about those 

two children who have strayed familiarly 

through these desultory pages. They, 

too, are as careful to turn to me the 

smiling side of their lives as my son so 

far away from me. 

It is perhaps for this that I feel nearer 

to my son Henry than to any of my 

241 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



children. He writes me seldom and then 
only brief communications. My know- 
ledge of his life and comings and goings 
is through my daughter-in-law, but in 
the nature of his business he makes me 
brief and flying visits; he descends upon 
us at odd moments, which disturbs Mar- 
garet and Dudley. They try and try to 
make him telegraph me or write when 
he is coming. They think his unexpected 
visits disturb me; I suppose they get 
this from my trembling eagerness at the 
times when I am surprised into say- 
ing: "I think Henry is coming to- 
night." 

And very often he comes when I think 
he is, and then again I am wrong, though 
I am superstitious enough to believe 
that he has thought of coming and then 

changed his mind when this strong f eel- 

242 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



ingof his nearness sweeps over me. And 
when he comes I see him as he is. If he 
has made a good business deal or if 
business worries him, he says so, while 
Dudley and Margaret hover around like 
two anxious parents, trying to play Prov- 
idence. If they know he is coming, they 
meet him first with warnings and head- 
shakings, coaching him what to tell me 
and what not to tell me ; and for a time he 
tries to be good, but before he goes, he 
flings out to me what is worrying or 
troubling him. To him I speak my mind 
more than to any one, and preach to him 
the self-control that he needs. He comes 
to me as he has always come, for a cer- 
tain sort of strength. I give him balance 
and smooth him out. I am to him what 
I am not to any of my other children, — 

the mother of younger years ; the mother 

243 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



to whom to turn for advice and strength, 
and I leap out to meet it. 

My other children — those who see 
me from day to day — tell me that his 
visits upset me, and so they do. I have 
been ill and depressed sometimes for 
two or three days when I have not been 
able to get him, or when his worry has 
been a difficult one, as I always was ; 
as I was when they were ill ; as I was 
through the difficult phases in the boys' 
developments. 

Tranquillity and peace perhaps pro- 
long life, and yet — who knows ? 
There seems to be before us the ques- 
tion as to whether we shall wear out 
or rust out, and most of us are praying 
to fate that we may be allowed to wear 
out. Yet who can judge ? I know that 

my children's silence, at which I often 

244 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



chafe, is not best for me, but perhaps 

it is best for them, since I cannot help 

them, since my anxiety only heightens 

theirs. When I see them cloaking their 

troubles with smiles ; when I feel the 

atmosphere surcharged with anxiety, 

and see the cloud lift again, I often 

think it is perhaps self-preservation 

that makes them do what they call 

" spare me " ; that to watch me troubled 

and broken with anxiety about their 

worries would be for them a double 

strain. 

I know when Betty was ill that my 

trouble — though I was tranquil and 

though I spoke heartening words — 

was an added burden to Margaret. I 

know that for her there were two sick 

people in the house ; that I was one, 

ill and suffering spirit for the sick body 

245 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



of her child. And while it seems to me 
that silence is perhaps the hardest of 
all to bear, the peace it brings is good 
for all of us. 

I have said that we should decide 
whether we should rust out or wear 
out, but perhaps that was decided for 
us in our youth and in our middle age, 
for we are continually deciding all our 
life long what kind of old people we are 
to be. Every moment of our lives we are 
preparing for age ; carving out the 
faces that we are to wear ; moulding 
and modeling and casting our characters 
for good or for bad ; deciding if those 
last years — those dependent years, so 
full of heartbreak, so full of the giving- 
up of those things which make life life — 
shall be bearable to those closest to us. 

Some years ago I began observing 
246 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



the various types of age about me, and 
it appeared to me in many unlovely 
guises. Often the women whom life 
had treated the most gently turned 
toward life unlovely faces, — masks of 
discontent. I ask myself, Is life so sad 
that on the faces of age one should so 
often see such deep prints of ineradicable 
grief, or is it the habit of discontent, 
year by year, planting a wrinkle here 
and drawing down the mouth there ? 

I, who am as yet only what people 
call elderly, look sometimes with a 
certain fright at the faces which I see 
that are old. I see upon the street old 
men whose faces are carven as though 
in granite ; the hardness of their own 
hard hearts is there in every line. Others 
I see yet more terrible, — loose- 
mouthed and vacant-eyed, speaking of 

247 



AUTOBIOGRAPHr OF 



a life of indulgence of the body. They 
have no thoughts to carry with them to 
the grave ; no light from the hills makes 
them hft up their eyes ; they have for- 
gotten the hills if ever they knew them. 
And the faces of the old women, — how 
vacant are so many of them ; how dis- 
contented! What furrowed brows, 
penned with sorrow as though their 
thoughts had become steeped with sad- 
ness until it had become moulded on 
every line of the face without. What 
bitterness again ! And all these things 
bespeak a feebleness of the spirit. 
Day by day, as they walk on the road 
that leads to age, they forge out of 
life their own masters and the doom of 
those about them as well. There is 
something in character that seems to 

survive even the mind. I often call to 

248 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



mind the story of Emerson, who, when 
his mind failed and he could n't think 
of words and what he wanted to say, 
waited with a sublime patience, — some- 
times waited for the word that would n't 
come. His own serenity outlived the 
worn-out tool that had used it for such 
high purposes. 

I remember from the days of my 
early middle life an old woman who 
had become completely childish and 
rambled around the town in which she 
lived, a harmless and fantastic figure. 
Deafness was added to her other in- 
firmities. And yet, as she went along 
the streets talking to herself, one 
caught snatches of a mind imperish- 
ably enwrapped in the kind things of 
life. 

"What a beautiful child ! " one would 
249 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



hear her remark. "Oh, the lovely 
child! . . . "What a lovely day ! " 

This poor distraught and maimed 
spirit saw beauty everywhere. She 
would stop a stranger on the street to 
know if she knew the Mrs. Grant with 
whom she lived. "Such a beautiful 
woman ! So good, so good ! " 

Of all the lessons that come to me 
out of my past, the lesson of this crea- 
ture, never a stalwart spirit, but, like 
her friend, "so good," returns to me 
the oftenest. She had had a heart that 
had been a fountain of love to all that 
came near her; though she had never 
been a woman of much brains or wisdom, 
yet her indestructible sweetness sur- 
vived her, and this, it seems to me, is 
the lesson that age should bring to 

youth continually. 

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AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



" Choose," says Age, " this face so 
beneficent, so sweet, so kind, or this 
other, written over and over with the 
small, mean vices of uncharitableness 
and littleness." 

This much is to a certain degree in 
our hands, but what is not in our hands 
is the final end, the terrible and inevi- 
table breaking-up of the powers of the 
body ; th^ end that no one can tell if it 
shall come swiftly and mercifully or 
with torment for those one loves and 
for one's self. One can only hope here ; 
one cannot know. And I suppose it is 
because of this menace that glides be- 
fore us more and more closely, if we 
stop to think, that so many older men 
and women have such impatience at 
having clipped from them one or any 

of the little things that still make life 

251 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



the place it was. Every outer sign of 
age reminds us of this; every new 
feebleness of the body brings before us 
vividly the goal to which we are tend- 
ing, — not the goal of death, but per- 
haps the goal of the last years of an 
enfeebled and broken and useless life. 
I think it is this shadow that chills the 
hearts of those of us who have brave 
spirits more than the thought of death. 



CHAPTER XIII 

GROWESTG OLD GRACEFULLY 

I REMEMBER Very well indeed when I 
began to hate to look at myself in the 
glass. That is the turning-point, — I 
hated to look at myself. The women 
who look in the glass oftenest are not 
the vainest ones. Where a woman looks 
in the glass out of vanity once, she 
looks in the glass twenty times as a 
matter of criticism, — looks to see if 
her hat is on straight, looks to see if 
her belt is doing its duty, looks to see 
if her skirt hangs well. 

There came a time in my life when, 
while I was no longer young, I had a 

wholesome middle-aged look. I was no 

253 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



better looking and no worse than my 
neighbors, and my children encouraged 
vanity in me, as one's dear children very 
often will, by saying the sweet and fa- 
miliar words : "How dear you look to- 
day, mother ! I love to see mother in 
that dress "; or, admonishing me ;" Mo- 
ther, you really must have a new hat. 
Look at mother's hat ! " 

The moment comes to every woman 
when, instead of flushing under the ap- 
proval of some masculine creature, — 
either sweetheart or husband, according 
to her state of life, she sees herself mir- 
rored in the eyes of her grown-up 
children. You may be sure that these 
little children of yours, that you see 
now growing up around you, will in time 
pay you more tribute and also give you 

more frank criticism than any one you 

254 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



have ever known, devoted husband or 
sweetheart as he may have been. 

I wear certain laces and a certain 
brooch because my son Dudley cares 
for them, certain colors because of my 
daughter Margaret, and I am contin- 
ually in a state of border warfare with 
them both for trying to make me buy 
new things which I do not need and 
that are clear beyond my pocketbook. 
And my case is the same as that of 
many an elderly woman of my acquain- 
tance ; we have to fairly fight with our 
children not to put every penny we 
possess upon our backs. No young lady 
just coming out could hear the words 
from loving relatives that she needs a 
new dress so often as I do. 

I will come back to what I was say- 
ing, — there was a time in my hf e when 

255 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



because of the flattery of those I loved 
— and there is no flattery more far- 
reaching than that — I surveyed my 

middle-aged reflection in the glass with 

• 

peace of heart. One of my daughters 
would inform me that she thought I was 
the prettiest mother in the world ; the 
blessed part of it is, I think they really 
believed this was true. Then the day 
came when I reahzed that my face was 
old. I had been out of health, nothing 
very serious or alarming, but I had lost 
flesh and hadn't been out of doors much, 
and one day as I turned to meet my re- 
flection it seemed to me that a thousand 
wrinkles started out at me, that there 
were lines about my eyes, that my whole 
face was shrunken. 

People speak of the terrible moment 

it is in a woman's life when she finds 

256 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN" 



her first wrinkle. I don't believe most 
normal women find the first wrinkle at 
all. Very few of us are professional 
beauties ; the happiness of very few of 
us consists in our staying in our first 
flush of looks forever. The average, 
normal, comfortable woman is too busy 
looking after her babies and her home 
about the time the first wrinkle puts in 
an appearance to even notice it, and, 
even if she does, to be disturbed, be- 
cause all her contemporaries are no 
better off than she. The discovery of 
age is a different thing. I don't know 
if all women realize from one day to 
another as I do this creeping on of the 
hands of Time, but I think there must 
come a day of definite awakening. I 
have seen women stricken down with 

some illness and go to bed plump and 

257 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



middle-aged, and emerge, a few weeks 
afterwards, from the sick-room, frosted 
with age. I have seen sorrow rob women 
of the Indian summer of youth still 
more often. Generally it comes upon 
them stealthily like a thief in the night ; 
you don't know how long it has been 
coming on, but little by little you find 
yourself " Old Mrs. So-and-So " instead 
of " Mrs. So-and-So." 

The first wrinkle when one has chil- 
dren and a loving husband means no- 
thing at all, but this look of age — it is the 
first cold warning of the Yalley of the 
Shadow, it is a sign that one is actually 
on the road downhill, that the best days 
of life are over, that the activities that 
have made life worth living, from now 
on must slip more and more from one's 

fingers. My heart may feel as young as 

25S 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



ever, but what good is that if mj knees 
are rusty and going up and down stairs 
begins to be a burden, and I find myself 
tired after a httle walk, and I know that 
never again can I go back, that not one 
of these wrinkles can vanish with return- 
ing health, that activities once given up 
have gone from us then forever. 

Small wonder then that I dont like 
to look at my face, though it is still 
sweet in the eyes of my children. I don't 
like, I frankly confess, to be reminded 
of all that the wrinkles and gray hair 
imply. There is no vanity in this: I 
never was enough of a beauty to be vain 
about my looks, but was always glad 
that I could be, as my unflattering aunts 
used to say when I was a little girl, 
" well enough," and that "I would pass 

in a crowd." I think, indeed, I am better 

259 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



looking as an older woman than as a 
younger one. My features are of the 
kind that endure, my hair has taken a 
not unpleasing shade of gray, and yet 
I turn from this reflection of a not ill- 
looking elderly woman, not because I 
mind being older, but because now and 
then it comes quickly to me to what age 
and to what goal I am so fast approach- 
ing. The spacious and sunny hours, oc- 
cupations to my liking, and my dear 
children at hand to smooth the road for 
me, make life a pleasant place, — so I 
turn my face away. 

Not long ago there was visiting some 
neighbors of ours an elderly relative. 
Her hair had not turned gray, but had 
kept a rather nondescript fluffy blond. 
She had also retained what is called 

" the figure of a girl." I expect that in 

260 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



reality she was a fairly angular woman 
under her successful millinery ; anyway 
she lacked the comfortable roundness 
that comes to most women who do not 
grow thin with advancing years, and 
for my part I had rather resemble a 
comfortable armchair than a little spid- 
ery bent-wood affair that looks as if 
it would blow away in a good strong 
wind. This woman, however, at a little 
distance, gave a sad little illusion of 
youth. As one saw her going down the 
street, for instance, one would have 
thought her quite a young person; 
across the room one would have given 
her forty-five, — forty-five dressed with 
a certain discreet youthf ulness ; and 
close at hand she looked very young 
for her age, very well preserved. This 

caused a good deal of comment. 

261 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



" Well," said Margaret, " I 'm glad 
you don't look like that, mother ! I think 
it is absurd for a woman of her age with 
middle-aged daughters to dress the way 
she does." 

" Yes," returned one of our neigh- 
bors, " and do you notice her complex- 
ion? It seems to me," went on this 
young mentor of the aged, "that women 
don't know how to grow old gracefully 
the way they used to." 

I said nothing, but my heart went out 
to this poor lady who was struggling 
so valiantly to shove back the hands of 
the clock; and I would like to make 
here a little plea to you younger people. 
I know it is considered becoming to do 
what is called " grow old gracefully "; 
that is, to face the world with all your 

wrinkles, to have the courage of your 

262 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



gray hairs, to lay aside your favorite 
gay colors and put on the dark colors 
in which people are supposed most 
suitably to mourn their dead youth ; I 
know that younger people consider that 
we should be willing and eager even to 
betray every one of the years we have 
lived by our actions, by our looks, by 
our dress, and I do not pretend that 
this is not the bravest part to take, but 
here and there we find a coward in this 
world, and let us not be untender. Who 
knows what pressure has been brought 
to bear? It is silly, if you like, it is lack- 
ing in intelligence to try to hide one's 
age, but what a tragedy it confesses, 
what a futile and heart-rending struggle ! 
When I see women, as I have in the 
past, with foolish false fronts which 

did n't match their grizzling back hair, 

263 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



when I see youthful garments on old 
shoulders, I am sometimes filled with 
hnpatienee and think, " Oh, you silly 
woman!" But I am still more filled 
with pity and say, " Poor woman ! Sad 
woman! Woman on whose shoulders 
so heavy a burden has been laid that 
you cannot face the inevitable 1 " 

I remember there lived in our town 
a maiden lady who kept her pretty looks 
so that she was like a sort of thistle- 
down wraith of a girl. She lived alone 
and on so small a stipend that no one 
knew how she kept soul and body to- 
gether. She was one of those poor souls 
w^ho had lost her lover on the eve of 
her marriage and forevermore mourned 
him. 

When she died, strangers swarmed 

over her house. At the time of the auc- 

264 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



tion there had been no one of near enough 
kin to take the trouble to go over the 
house and put away the httle trivial 
effects of the dead which no casual eye 
should ever see, and so there was un- 
covered before the gaping town row af- 
ter row of emj^ty bottles of complexion 
bleach slightly tinged with pink; peo- 
ple laughed and gossiped and thought 
it was very funny. There were others 
who frowned, asserting that at her time 
of life this woman should have known 
better than to spend her few pennies 
on such folly; which was all, no doubt, 
very wise and true. This poor lady kept 
herself young only for herself. I suppose 
she didn't want the ghost of her dead 
lover to find a wrinkled old woman in 
place of the fresh -faced girl he had 
loved. 

265 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



You may be sure that almost all older 
women who refuse to grow old grace- 
fully reveal some tragedy in these mis- 
taken efforts which should cause 
younger people to be sorry. After all, 
it is growing old gracefully in the spirit 
that counts, and it seems to me more 
important as we advance in years that 
our spirits should be sweetened, and 
that we should be kinder in our outlook 
upon life, and that we should fight 
against the egotism of age, than that 
we should dress in a way to proclaim 
our years. 

Perhaps my turning away from my 
looking - glass, and all my self - con- 
sciousness and rebellion at the advanc- 
ing traces of years, are a greater sin 
against the true standard of growing 

old gracefully than those who can trick 

266 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



themselves into a belief that they look 
young and try naively to trick others. 

When a young woman criticizes an 
older for these foibles, I do not think 
she is preparing herself in her heart to 
grow old gracefully, and yet all of us 
are preparing every day for what sort 
of old age we are going to pass. The 
question of growing old as one should 
is a very deep one. It is n't a matter of 
clothes; it is as deep as hfe itself. 

When I was young I can remember 
certain older people whose passing 
through a room seemed to me like a 
benediction. There was one elderly 
relative of mine — a woman who had 
never married — with whom I used to 
pass afternoons. I don't think that I 
ever told her one of my troubles, great 

or small, but her very presence was so 

267 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



sweet, so gallant, so up-standing, and, 
withal, humorous, — so like a perpetual 
sermon to me, — that I used to come 
from her feeling as though I had drunk 
of the spring of life; and yet her life 
had been difficult. Report said she had 
turned her face from the marriage 
she desired to take care of an exacting 
mother; she had brought up a brood of 
younger brothers and sisters, and al- 
ways she had fought against poverty, 
and, unflinching, faced loneliness as 
the years advanced. She, if you like, 
had grown old gracefully, and yet, had 
she insisted on dressing in scarlet and 
painting her cheeks to match her 
gown, she would have grown old no 
less gracefully, it seems to me. 
I remember another time, when I was 

hurrying home to the bedside of a sick 

268 



AN ELDERLY WOMAN 



child, that my companion in the car 
was an old man, and as we traveled to- 
gether many hours, he told me the 
story of his life. To hear him speak of 
his wife, who had died some years be- 
fore, was a thing that made one be- 
lieve in mankind; to hear him speak in 
a simple, refreshing way of his faith 
would make one, doubting, believe in 
God. He himself was fighting for the 
life of a son who had been stricken 
with consumption, but was winning in 
the fight. His brave talk and his loving 
attitude of mind poured I know not 
what strength into my own faltering 
spirit, and enabled me to go to the 
nursing that was before me with an 
unflinching heart, though he knew 
nothing of my trouble. 

As I grow older, I see examples 

269 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



here and there of lovely and inspir- 
ing old age, and I pray that I may 
grow old gracefully in some image 
like that. 



/ 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



THE CORNER OF 
HARLEY STREET 

Being some familiar correspondence of 

PETER HARDING, M.D. 

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QUEED 

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SCOTTIE AND HIS LADY 

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THE MEDDLINGS OF EVE 

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WHEN SHE CAME HOME 
FROM COLLEGE 

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JOHN WINTERBOURNFS FAMILY 



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